


A Medieval King Arthur in Cameron's Court

by tuesdaymidnight



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Anachronisms, Humor, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-02
Updated: 2014-09-02
Packaged: 2018-02-15 05:19:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2217195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesdaymidnight/pseuds/tuesdaymidnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The legends all say that King Arthur will return when Britain needs him most. That's why Merlin is confused when Arthur is awoken in the twenty-first century. The country isn't under attack, the pound remains strong, British artists are topping the Billboard charts, really, the only thing amiss is Merlin's magic. At first, Merlin thinks it's technology interfering with the balance of magic in the world, but with the arrival of Arthur, he's not so sure. When Gwaine and Percival also reappear, together the four men try to find the cause of the magical failure. Eventually they track the problem down to a CEO of an energy industry giant who looks suspiciously like Morgana, and the four old friends are forced to stop her. All the while, Merlin has his hands full with three medieval knights trying to adjust to life in the twenty-first century.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Medieval King Arthur in Cameron's Court

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thank you to the mods for resurrecting the Merlin Big Bang, my to wonderful and awesome beta [OnTheTurningAway](http://archiveofourown.org/users/OnTheTurningAway/), Britpicker [Ememmyem](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Ememmyem), and artist [Mella68](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mella68).

_Prologue_

It took Merlin 50 years after the invention of the internal combustion engine before he was willing to get in a car. It took Arthur about 50 minutes after his return.

“This is brilliant, Merlin! The ground you could cover in one of these!”

“Of course,” Merlin muttered under his breath. “Of course he loves fast cars.”

“Where did you say we were going?”

“I don't think I did. I live in London now.”

“Where's London?”

“East.”

“Is that where the castle is?”

“Actually, it's a palace now, but the Queen is really more of a figurehead than what you're used to. I suppose I could give you the rundown of the history of the U.K. if you'd really like me to, the books got a lot wrong—”

“Merlin?”

“Yes.”

“What's the U.K.?”

* * * * *

Merlin had known without being told that he should go to the lake. He woke up that morning and just knew it was time for Arthur to wake up. He prepared as best he could and then drove all the way west to the lake. All night he sat and waited on the shore until a boat appeared on the surface at dawn, floating toward him like something out of a dream. When the boat hit the shore, Merlin rose slowly, holding his breath. But then Arthur, his Arthur, had sat up and blinked at him few times.

“Merlin,” was the first word out of his mouth, and it was the sweetest sound Merlin had heard in over a thousand years, and he had heard Mozart play in person.

“Yes, Arthur. It's me.”

“I had the strangest dream.” Then Arthur looked around, his eyes squinting in the sunlight.

“But then I wake up in a boat, and I think maybe it wasn't a dream after all. Am I dead? I vaguely remember being dead.” He scrubbed a hand across his face, still as youthful as the day he had fallen to Mordred.

“You were mostly dead,” Merlin explained. “If you were fully dead, you wouldn't have been able to come back or remember being dead.”

“Merlin, that makes no sense. A person can't be mostly dead.”

"You tell that to Nikki Sixx.”

“Six what? You're making less sense than usual.”

Merlin had dreamed, fantasised, ached over this moment for literally centuries, planning what to say and how to say it, and of course he was totally mucking it up. Seeing Arthur again was making him flustered as always.

“Why don't you come out of the boat?” Merlin walked toward Arthur cautiously, still worried Arthur might vaporize like a hallucination.

When he got to the boat, he reached out his hand. Arthur started to bat it away, but he wobbled as he stood up. Merlin gripped Arthur's arm tightly so he could regain his balance. That first touch was like a jolt of electricity through his body. Merlin stepped back as Arthur climbed out of the boat. He could feel Arthur's eyes on him, but looking up was overwhelming. Then he felt a finger under his chin, tilting his face up.

“Merlin,” Arthur said, hushed like a prayer. Then he leaned in, touching their foreheads together. His hand came up to wrap around the back of Merlin's neck. The position was so familiar that the centuries between them vanished. Merlin breathed Arthur in and everything else in the world disappeared. Arthur had never been all that affectionate; they couldn't afford to be given his station, so the feather light touch of Arthur's fingers at the nape of his neck was a rush to Merlin's system. He had to hold himself back from tackling Arthur to the ground and trying to crawl inside him.

Merlin stepped back to regain his composure.

“What's the last thing you remember?”

Arthur closed his eyes. “Dying. You were with me and—your magic. You're a sorcerer.”

Now that Arthur was all in one piece, Merlin had worried how he would react when he remembered Merlin's magic, not that it mattered much anymore. But it would still matter to Arthur.

“How long have I been out? Who's in charge of Camelot? Where is Guinevere?”

Merlin's heart sunk. He knew he would have to answer those questions. Of course Arthur would want to know. Of course his concern would be for Camelot above all else. It had been so long since Merlin had to face the memories.

The cost of Arthur's return was having to relive the years that went by as he watched Gwen and Leon finally die of old age. Then he watched their children age, and their children's children, and eventually their descendants who they had never met. Merlin watched as the Black Death took most of his people. He watched as Camelot was brought to ruin. He watched William the Bastard take the throne from his cousin and Henry change everything with the Reformation. He watched the Empire rise and fall. He watched industrialization speed up the world and globalization spread like wildfire with computer technology.

How could he tell Arthur any of it?

Arthur continued to look around in confusion. “I feel different, Merlin. It's different here. The air isn't the same.”

“Arthur, you've been asleep for a very long time. The air _is_ different.”

“You're being cryptic on purpose. Just how long have I been asleep?”

“Well, there's no good way to tell you. You might not even believe me. I'm not sure _I_ would believe me,” Merlin said, mostly to himself.

“Ten years? Fifty years? A hundred years?” Arthur's eyes were wide as he watched Merlin react.

Merlin shook his head. “Longer. Much longer.”

“Just tell me, Merlin. I'll find out one way or another.”

He was right, of course. Merlin had no doubt that Arthur would walk until he ran into someone and flat-out asked what year it was. Of course, even the calendar was different now, but Arthur didn't know that.

“Over 1400 years.”

Arthur froze. He was silent. It was unlike Arthur to be so still. For those horrible minutes, Merlin thought maybe Arthur's body had been regenerated just fine, but his soul was no longer intact, the fragile balance destroyed by the shock of returning to the world after so long.

“Over a thousand years,” Arthur finally said.

“Yes.”

There was more silence, and then Merlin could see Arthur's familiar resolve take hold. He straightened his shoulders ever-so-slightly, and for a moment, Merlin saw his king.

“So, Camelot?”

Merlin shook his head sadly. “Gone.”

“Oh, well, I suppose that makes sense.”

“Arthur, I wish things were different. I wish the world was different. I wish I had never lost you in the first place--” Merlin had to clear his throat, but his composure was mostly gone. He felt Arthur's comforting hand on his arm.

“It's all right, Merlin. It's not your fault now, is it?”

Merlin shook his head, feeling horrible that it was Arthur consoling him and not the other way around.

“But how is any of this possible?” Arthur asked.

“It turns out I'm not just a sorcerer.”

Arthur raised an eyebrow.

“It turns out I'm maybe one of the most powerful sorcerers in the world.”

Merlin chanced a look at Arthur, whose jaw was hanging open a little. He cleared his throat. “Well, don't leave me in suspense, Merlin.” He gave Merlin an encouraging smile, his real smile, and Merlin felt more at ease than he had since Arthur rose.

“Well, there was an ancient spell, only used by sorcerers of the old religion. It wasn't all that complex all things considered. I just had to freeze you in that middle place between life and death.” Arthur's face was starting to darken. “What are you thinking, Arthur?”

Arthur shook his head before speaking.

“I know Gaius always said magic was natural and a part of the Earth, and I know that you were born with magic and didn't have any choice, but this isn't _natural_. I was dead, and I wake up 1400 years later. Just how powerful are you that you can make the impossible be so? How is this not evil?”

Merlin scoffed. “Do you think _I'm_ evil?”

“Of course not. You—you're Merlin. You wouldn't intentionally do anything evil.”

“So I'm unintentionally evil then?”

“No! That's not what I'm saying. I just—I was dead! Maybe it's because I avoided learning anything about magic for my father's sake, but this makes no sense! Even if you could 'freeze' me between life and death, why me? Why now? Why did you make me come back now? _How_ did you make me come back now? And why did you wait 1400 years?”

Merlin knew they were totally reasonable questions to ask, but Arthur was shouting at him, accusing him, and it made him defensive.

“I didn't preserve you for your sake! I didn't do it for mine either! That's not how the spell works. I did it because you weren't finished. It wasn't your destiny to die. Camelot still needed you. The spell was only possible because you're a vessel for magic. Not everyone is as tied to the earth's natural magic as you are. I don't know if it has to do with how you were conceived or because of your fate, but the spell worked on you. You would only be revived when Camelot needed you most.”

“But you said that Camelot's gone.”

“The name has changed, the borders have changed, but the blood of its people still lives on. You of all people know that the strength of Camelot was found in the hearts of its people. The spell I cast was only such that you would arise when your people needed you again, not the place.”

“And that time is now?” Arthur still sounded incredulous.

“Apparently so! You're awake, aren't you?”

“You tell me! What's happened? What's so wrong in the world that I'm needed after all this time? Are we at war? Has the dragon destroyed everything?”

Merlin looked down at his feet.

“Merlin, what is it?”

“I don't know exactly.”

“You don't know? This makes no sense.”

“We haven't formally declared war since World War II. So it's nothing as obvious as that. The twenty-first century is a lot more subtle. Politics happen in a clandestine way. We still have wars of a sort, of course, but the leaders themselves don't fight. Right now we're involved in a few military conflicts, but we're withdrawing from Afghanistan, so this just doesn't make sense.”

Arthur's eyes were wide. “Af-ghan-i-stan? A _world_ war?”

“It doesn't matter. You'll just have to trust me that it's not war.”

“But why is it then that the people should need a king?”

Merlin had a few ideas, certainly, but he wasn't ready to share them with Arthur. There was too much Arthur wouldn't understand, and too many gaps that Merlin needed to fill before he could fully explain it. So he turned to his fail safe tactic—feigning ignorance.

“Well, I can't be sure. There are a few sources I need to consult, research I need to do. I think it might be best to allow you to acclimatise for a few days. Then we can decide what to do.”

He could see Arthur wanting to protest, not wanting to go forward until he had answers. To be the one to take orders rather than give them wasn't in Arthur's genetic makeup, but he really didn't have much say in the matter.

“I guess that sounds all right, but I know you're keeping information from me. You never were a good liar.”

Merlin raised an eyebrow at the ludicrous suggestion, but he wasn't about to open that can of worms.

“You've been mostly dead for 1400 years! Don't you want a little time to remember what being alive is like?”

“Well when you put it that way,” Arthur replied with a roll of his eyes. “Are you camped somewhere nearby?”

“No, I thought I might take you back to my flat.”

“Your flat what?”

“Oh, right, I meant my living quarters. Sorry, 'flat' is a modern term. I own some rooms in a building a few hours away. I live there.”

“You live there? So you've been here awhile then. Say, how was it that you woke up?”

Merlin scratched the back of his neck. He was hoping to get around having to tell Arthur the truth. Merlin's age was a sensitive subject that Arthur couldn't even begin to understand. The Dark Ages weren't just dark for Western Europe, and they were ones Merlin didn't want to recall. But he knew Arthur, and he would keep needling Merlin for an exact date.

“Well, er, I didn't.”

“You mean?”

“Yes.”

“You've been here all this time?”

“Well, I haven't been sitting here by the lake all this time waiting for you! I've done a lot.”

“I wasn't—that's not what I meant and you know you it. How did you—how are you—are you immortal?”

“I'm not immortal, no. I tried the spell on me, but you can't do magic on yourself without some kind of conduit, and this kind of magic doesn't work with a tincture like a healing spell can. But my magic does seem to preserve me.” He waved his hand by means of explanation, hoping Arthur wouldn't ask him for specifics if he thought it was normal for a magic user to be so old. “Not to mention, the spell only seems to work when someone is low on life force.”

“So you did this on others? Next you're going to tell me that Percival and Gwaine are going to pop up.”

“Well, er, it's not outside the realm of possibility.”

“Merlin, what did you do? Playing with life and death this way, I don't care if it was for the 'need' of Camelot, it can't be good.”

“It was like the spell I put on you. It might not have worked! I haven't seen either of them since I put the spell on them. It might even be that there's just something about you in particular that makes the spell work.”

“But you think they could come back?”

“We all have magic in us, and Percival and Gwaine were both just as strong as conduits as you when I was doing the spell. I wish I had known it when Lancelot died, but I guess his life was fated to be short.”

Merlin cut himself off. Lancelot had always been a sore subject between him and Arthur. Arthur cleared his throat, so Merlin changed the subject.

“This is a lot to take in, I know. Will you just come with me?”

“Where else would I go, Merlin?”

Merlin tried not to let his heart sink at Arthur's words. He knew Arthur was still in a state of shock and wasn't thinking beyond the idea that he had been asleep for over a thousand years. But Merlin had been hoping that Arthur would be happier to see Merlin again. Arthur had loved him back in his own time; there was no reason why he wouldn't still unless that went away with the spell like a side effect. Merlin shook off his disappointment.

“You're going to have to change clothes. You'll stand out like a sore thumb in a red cape and armour.”

“You mean those ridiculous things you're wearing are what count for clothing these days?”

“Women even wear trousers now, Arthur,” Merlin said drily.

Arthur's eyes widened and Merlin had to stifle a laugh. If women in trousers scandalised Arthur, then he was in for a rude awakening, so to speak, in the twenty-first century.

Luckily Merlin had thought ahead and brought clothes for Arthur to change into. As he helped Arthur out of his armour, a rush of memories flooded back to him. It had been so long since he had felt Arthur's body beneath his hands. The thrill of being so close to him, skimming his hands over his arms and shoulders, it was all still there.

“What are these, Merlin?” Arthur was holding up a pair of pants.

“Underclothes.”

“But they're so small. My bits will suffocate.”

“Well that's what people in the 21st century wear, so get used to it.”

It took Arthur about a week to realise that Merlin liked the way he looked in them. His vanity had survived the centuries, and he took to strutting around the flat in them and nothing else. It took him another week still to figure out they came in Pendragon red, and Merlin just couldn’t resist buying him a pair or two. 

But after he changed clothes that first time, he stood awkwardly in jeans and t-shirt and trainers. He didn't look at all like Arthur. He was still gorgeous as he ever was, but it was clear that he felt completely uncomfortable.

He went along willingly, though. Merlin hadn't doubted that when he thought about Arthur's awakening. So long as Camelot needed him, as obscure as that need might be, Arthur would follow. But when they reached the car he stopped dead in his tracks.

“What _is_ that?”

“It's a car. An automobile. Um, it’s like a horse-drawn wagon with a roof and without the horses.”

Arthur walked around it, keeping his distance.

“What kind of smith can do this kind of work?”

“Er, I don't think it's all metal anymore. They used to be metal, now they're really more plastic.”

“Plastic?”

“There's a great future in plastics,” Merlin quoted.

“What?”

“Sorry, it's a material that a lot of things are made out of now. It actually comes from petroleum.”

“Pet-roleum?”

“Don't worry about it. I don't really understand how it works myself.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but Arthur luckily let it pass, still fascinated with the car. “So this is how we travel? Not by horse?”

“Horses haven't been used for nearly a century, except for sport.”

“So they still hold jousts then.” Arthur sounded relieved.

Merlin didn't have the heart to tell him that Warwick was likely the only place he was going to see a joust in the twenty-first century, and it would be totally staged.

“Well, there are other sports as well. I think you'll like polo. It seems like something you would have done, had you known about it.”

“What is it?”

“It's a team sport. Each team has four players all on horseback, and they carry mallets and they use the mallets to hit a ball past two posts.”

“They try to get a ball past two posts?”

“Yes, er, that's the point of most sports nowadays. It's much less violent than jousting.”

“I see.”

“Just get in the car.” Merlin opened the passenger side door and Arthur sat down. It took some convincing that he needed a seatbelt, but eventually Arthur was in and they were on their way to London.

As they drove, Arthur looked around with wide-eyed wonder at everything they passed. Merlin wanted to ask him if he was scared, but he held back. Instead, he tried to offer explanations where he could, figuring that explaining the current state of things might be more helpful than explaining _how_ they got to be that way. Of course, most of Arthur's questions focused on how, so Merlin had to deflect what he could.

Merlin knew he was in a privileged position; he probably knew more about the world, or Britain anyway, than anyone alive. Oh, there were other magical creatures who surpassed him in age, but they tended to keep to themselves and their own territories. Merlin knew of a French sorcerer who washed his hands of humanity, bought a resort on Martinique, and lived on the beach ever since. He stopped returning Merlin's messages before post was possible across the Atlantic Ocean.

But the amount of information Merlin had and knew about the world was too much. It was certainly too much in terms of amount, but it was also a burden—a terrible burden—that Merlin didn't want to inflict on Arthur.

Once he managed to answer the England question, the barrage of questions didn't stop.

“What happened to all the trees, Merlin?”

“What are these roads made out of?”

“How did the cartographer get the paint on this map to be so flat?”

“How are you getting your hair to stand up like that?”

“Do they still make ale?”

Merlin explained about all the different types of ale Arthur would be able to try, because luckily taverns still existed, which seemed to please him. But then he stopped asking questions.

Arthur had been silent for a solid two minutes when he jolted upright in the seat, nearly strangling himself on the seat belt.

“Merlin! Merlin can we stop this thing?”

Merlin tensed and immediately started looking for a place to pull over. “Yes, of course, Arthur. Is something wrong? Are you going to be sick? I got sick my first automobile ride.”

“Merlin, just stop the auto-mah-thing.”

Merlin pulled the car over and killed the engine. Arthur looked around in all directions, as Merlin grew more and more confused. Then, after a few tries, and Merlin getting his hands in the way, Arthur managed to unbuckle his seatbelt.

“Merlin, stop fretting over me for a second and look at me.”

Merlin looked up as Arthur reached over and cupped Merlin's face in his hands. Then without another word, he leaned forward and laid a soft kiss on Merlin's lips. Merlin melted. He felt like his whole body was floating, connected to the earth by the single point where his lips were touching Arthur's. Over a thousand years spent longing to share Arthur's breath once more and it was finally, finally, a reality instead of a dream.

He chased a second kiss when Arthur started to pull back, gripping the back of Arthur's neck so tightly that Arthur had no choice to comply. When he pushed his tongue into Arthur's mouth, the tiny, almost imperceptible groan that came out of Arthur's mouth was enough to shatter Merlin's heart into a million tiny pieces.

Arthur, his Arthur, his destiny, the only man he would ever love, was back.

“You always did like kissing,” Arthur murmured as he pulled himself out of Merlin's grip.

Merlin's heart started beating wildly. To feel Arthur’s lips on his again was a rush that only compared to the first time they had kissed all those many years ago.

“This is absolutely not a complaint, but what was that for?”

“I'm being selfish. I haven't considered what you must be feeling, seeing me after so long, being alive for so long, I can't even fathom it. I don't mean to presume that you still have that kind of regard for me—I shouldn't have been so presumptuous—but you do, don't you? I'm not making that up?”

Merlin shook his head, “Definitely not making that up. There's never been anyone else for me except you.”

“In 1400 years?”

“When you almost died, that part of me just switched off. My heart closed itself off from feeling regard for anyone else.”

“That's, but Merlin that's--”

“I know. Can we not talk about it?”

“Yes, of course, I'm sorry. I'm being so selfish about all of this.”

“Oh. Oh yes you are,” Merlin smirked. “But apology accepted. This situation is strange and unprecedented, I know, even for us.”

“Can I kiss you again?”

Instead of answering verbally, Merlin nearly pounced on Arthur. He was climbing in Arthur's lap when Arthur stopped him.

“Merlin, we're in public!”

“No one will see us! We're off to the side of the road!”

“I am not doing this with you in an automo-wagon.”

“But you're hard,” Merlin said, reaching down to Arthur’s crotch before Arthur grabbed his wrist.

“Yes well I, unlike you, have a sense of self-control.”

Merlin muttered something under his breath about clotpoles, but he reluctantly got back in his own seat. A minute later, Arthur reached his hand over and squeezed Merlin's knee. Merlin couldn't help but smile.

Arthur started asking questions about the buttons in the car. When Merlin told him that he could press them, he accidentally turned on the radio and shrieked. Had he not sounded genuinely scared, Merlin would have laughed. So Merlin had to explain to Arthur about radio waves and transmitters and pop music. Arthur amused himself for a half hour scanning through stations, listening to bits and pieces of songs.

“What is making those noises?”

The acoustic guitar was easy to explain. “It's an instrument like a lute. With strings across an open hole.” The drums were also easy. The electric guitar? The synthesizer? Not so much.

“But _how_ does it make fake noises?”

Arthur was completely unsatisfied with Merlin's account of frequency and the structure of the human ear. But as they got closer to London, Arthur was practically pushing his face against the window of the car and seemed too stunned to ask any more questions.

“Merlin. It's so _big_.”

“That's what she said,” Merlin sniggered.

He could feel Arthur's hard stare on him.

“It's a joke, you see, implying that your comment about size was a woman referring to a prick.”

“No, I understood. I just didn't find it particularly amusing.”

“But—but—that's comedic gold!”

“If this is what passes for humour in the twenty-first century, I'm not so sure I want to stay.”

“Well, people falling and getting hit in the genitals is still considered humour, so I think you'll be okay.”

When they got to Merlin's building, Arthur gaped at all the other cars parked in the car park. Merlin could tell he was itching to try driving. Merlin tried to imagine teaching Arthur, but couldn't fathom any scenario in which it didn't end with them in a shouting match.

“This way,” Merlin called, as Arthur's eyes lingered on a motorbike.

“What's _that_?”

“It's a motorbike.”

“So it's another vehicle?” Arthur guessed.

“Yes, it's powered the way a car is, but your body is exposed the way you would be on horseback.”

“So it's more like riding a horse then?” Arthur sounded far too excited for Merlin's taste.

“Don't even think about it. They're extremely dangerous.”

“But--”

“No. You need a license to drive any of these things anyway.”

“A license?”

“There's a test you have to take, and part of that includes demonstrating you know how to safely operate them.”

“A test? That's absurd! Do you have to pass a test to ride a horse too?”

“No, but you do have to register your horses.”

“Register?”

“Don't worry about it. I don't have access to stables anyway. Come on.”

Merlin almost took the lift, but he thought better of it and led Arthur up the four flights to his flat.

Arthur didn't comment much about Merlin's flat, but he looked around at everything with great interest. He was confused by all the gadgets in his kitchen, particularly the refrigerator, and Merlin's explanation of coolants and coils didn't seem to help matters.

“You drink cold ale? That sounds disgusting.”

“Don't knock it 'till you've tried it.”

Merlin had tried to hide all of his electronics, he couldn't say why, but Arthur with a mobile just seemed like a bad idea. Arthur was fascinated enough with light switches that Plants vs. Zombies was most certainly a step too far. So Merlin explained electric lighting as best he could, and Arthur took it in stride. He figured out what Merlin's digital clock was all on his own, and he seemed pretty pleased with himself. Arthur took to indoor plumbing with great delight.

“No chamber pots? Merlin, this is brilliant!”

Never before had Merlin seen someone so pleased with a toilet. After the flushing demonstration, he could see Arthur looking around for things to flush down it.

“Don't you dare flush anything other than toilet tissue down there. Once it goes down, you don't get it back.”

“Toilet tissue?”

As it turned out, Arthur was very pleased with the advent of toilet tissue.

Merlin was sure it would sink in at some point. In all his musings, centuries spent wondering what Arthur would think of telescopes and colonization and photography and the internet, he never thought it would be his electric toothbrush that would send Arthur careening into a meltdown.

“But why would you want it to spin on your teeth? Have you got so lazy that you can't move your arm back and forth? What are these bristles even made of? And why is it this garish colour? Merlin,” his voice broke. “I can't do this.”

Arthur flopped down on the sofa. Merlin went over to him and sat down beside him and tentatively threw an arm over his shoulders. Arthur melted into the touch. Merlin tried not to feel thrilled by the familiarity of the gesture.

“Everything is loud and fast and machines brush your teeth for you and I don't know what a One Direction is or what a cappuccino is or what someone does with it. I don't have a kingdom anymore. I don't belong here.”

Merlin knew it would happen in one way or another, but he hadn't really been prepared for it. He had read up on shock and post-traumatic stress, but no book or research ever covered the possibility of someone struggling with the perils of time travel.

The best Merlin could do was try to soothe Arthur and offer to help him adjust however he could.

“I'm sorry, Arthur,” Merlin apologised again. “I'm so sorry. I don't know what I can do to make it any easier for you. When it happens gradually, you don't notice how different it is.”

Arthur was sitting on the edge of the sofa and looked so forlorn that Merlin thought his heart might break.

“Can I just go to sleep?” Arthur, never one for self-defeat, finally asked. “Maybe things will look better in the morning.”

“Of course. I assume you don't mind sharing my bed?”

“Do your feet still turn to ice whenever you lie down?”

“Some things haven't changed,” Merlin smirked.

“Never would have thought I'd be grateful for your cold toes,” Arthur murmured.

The next morning, Merlin woke up with Arthur spooning behind him, his arm slung over Merlin’s waist, holding him close. The warmth of their bodies between the sheets was almost too much, but in that moment, Merlin wouldn't have gotten out of that bed for anything in the world.

Merlin turned around under Arthur's arm and put a hand on his broad chest. They rarely had had the luxury of curling around each other lazily. It had been a rare occasion to even wake up in the same room and not surrounded by knights. It was when he was sleepy that Arthur was welcoming, pliant.

“Arthur,” Merlin whispered. “Arthur, are you awake?”

Arthur's grumbled his customary negative reply.

“Let’s have you lazy daisy,” Merlin whispered against Arthur's lips.

Though insisting he wasn't awake, Arthur was awake enough to kiss Merlin back. Without the threat of anyone seeing, Arthur put everything into the kisses. He remembered exactly how Merlin liked to be kissed, how much pressure to give with his tongue, how much to suck on Merlin's lower lip. When they finally broke apart, Merlin realised that he was crying.

“Are you okay?” Arthur whispered.

“It's been so long,” was all Merlin could say.

He rolled Arthur onto his back and climbed on top of him, pressing him down, trying to touch their bodies together at every possible point.

“Merlin,” Arthur groaned. Need dripped from his voice.

Merlin was too overwhelmed to speak. They kissed until it was too much, and then they brought each other off with their hands. Afterward, Merlin collapsed half on Arthur and buried his face in the crook of Arthur's neck. Arthur just held onto him, and Merlin held onto Arthur back.

There weren't words that needed to be shared in that moment.

It was only their rumbling stomachs that roused them. Merlin puttered around the kitchen trying to make a breakfast that remotely resembled what Arthur was used to eating. Boiled eggs were easy enough, but Arthur was horrified by pre-sliced bread and was _very_ sceptical of the toaster, but the marmalade, he loved.

“What's in this?” he said with awe.

“Orange.”

“What's an orange?”

Merlin tried to describe the fruit but ultimately decided he would just have to take Arthur to a market.

Arthur seemed in much better spirits after breakfast and a shower—possibly because he made Merlin get in the shower with him and they shared another hand job under the warm water.

But by mid-morning, Merlin was exhausted from answering questions. They covered everything from airplanes (Arthur heard one), to education (“You mean everyone can _read_?”), to television (he saw Merlin's), to condoms (thanks to a commercial on said television).

“Should we get some of these condoms? You always said you liked the feeling of my come inside you.”

Merlin flushed.

“Since neither of us have diseases, we're probably fine without them.”

“They prevent diseases?”

“Yes. Certain kinds of diseases. Others can be prevented with other means.”

“Merlin, if we had known about all of these things in Camelot...” he trailed off.

“I know,” Merlin said softly, thinking about all the times he sat with Gaius at the bedside of a patient who was dying of what was now a commonly cured ailment.

“Well,” Arthur said, changing the subject. “Since I'm here, can I see more of London today?”

As much as he wanted it, Merlin knew he wouldn't be able to keep Arthur in the quiet little bubble of his flat. Arthur got restless on rainy days when he had a whole castle at his disposal. Three small rooms weren't going to cut it.

“Only if you promise to tell me immediately if you feel overwhelmed.”

“I'll be fine.”

Arthur wasn't fine. The crowds on the pavement didn't bother him, but he nearly walked out into oncoming traffic at every junction. Once he finally got the hang of pedestrian crossings, he grew horribly impatient when he finally learned the fine art of yielding.

“But this takes forever. Why didn't we drive your autocar?”

“Because parking is a nightmare and after being asleep for 1400 years, I thought maybe you'd like to give your muscles some use.”

The problems continued when Merlin tried to take Arthur clothes shopping. He'd purchased the one set of clothes in a rush just so Arthur wouldn't look ridiculous coming back to London. He maybe could have passed him off as doing medieval cosplay, but Merlin was pretty sure that drawing as little attention as possible to Arthur's return was the smarter thing to do, given the circumstances. The average person wouldn't believe the tale, so they were relatively safe from notice if Arthur said something odd or made a huge social faux pas. But the amount of magic in the spell preserving him was enough to arouse the suspicion of anyone in the magical community. Merlin was counting on them not paying attention, or chalking it up to a far more common magical power surge.

Merlin decided that a department store would be best, but Arthur was over-stimulated from the very beginning.

“Why do people need all of this? All of these choices? The same shirt in seven colours? And who weaves all of this? You could clothe all of Camelot with this one store alone.”

“I know, I know. There's a lot of excess in the 21st century, in fact, there's mostly excess. You know how women in the court would dress up to outdo each other in court? Well, everyone is like that here all the time.”

Arthur looked at a display in the store. “And 'skinny jeans' are the way to do that?”

“Well, fashion changes over time, but now, yes. Remind me to show you pictures from the 1770s sometime. Your calves would have looked spectacular in hose.”

Arthur went bright red. He never handled compliments about his appearance well, a point which Merlin was glad he could still use to make his king flustered.

Arthur picked up a t-shirt with a screen-printed rainbow on it.

“And I thought your formal serving costume was ridiculous.”

“Yet you made me wear it anyway.”

Arthur smiled.

As they went through the store and Arthur continued to balk at everything, Merlin tried to pick out the least objectionable, least flashy things he could for Arthur to try on. Once his arms were full, he led Arthur to the dressing rooms. On the way, a woman talking on her mobile almost ran right into them.

“...oh my god, and then he was all over Kate...” she said.

“I'm sorry I don't know who Kate is or--” Arthur started to reply, until Merlin grabbed Arthur's arm and led him away.

“Mobile telephones?” Arthur looked incredulous after the explanation. “That makes no sense. How can you speak with a person who isn't there? And why doesn’t she just shop with her friend if she wants to talk to her so badly?”

“I wish I had an answer to the second question. That's another quirk of modernity you're going to have to get used to, because it's not going away.”

Merlin managed to secure a dressing room and darted in behind Arthur when the attendant's back was turned. Two grown men going in to a dressing room was a recipe for getting kicked out of the store. The familiarity of Merlin dressing him made Arthur comfortable enough to complain about every single thing he tried on. He couldn't move in the jeans, the fabric was scratchy, and he thought he looked foolish in everything.

Eventually, Merlin managed to get Arthur a pair of trousers and a henley, and he was so exhausted, that he considered it enough of a victory to stop there.

They went to a pub for lunch. Arthur stared at the menu slack-jawed, but to his credit, he didn't complain about the unfamiliarity. Instead, he used a different tactic—charm.

“What's popular?” Arthur asked the waitress who seemed very interested in undressing Arthur with her eyes.

“We're known for our fish and chips,” she said with a bat of her eyelashes. Merlin tried to hide his scoff. He highly doubted they were known for anything.

“Well, then, I'll have the fish and chips.” Arthur stumbled over the words, but shot her such a disarming smile after that she visibly swooned.

“Your accent—where are you from?”

“Wales,” Merlin broke in quickly. It was the easiest explanation, and Merlin doubted anyone would question it.

The waitress gave them a curious look, but Merlin thought it was probably because of how close they were sitting to each other and not because of Arthur's accent.

When she brought them their food, Merlin thought Arthur would dig right in, but instead he sniffed at it curiously.

“This is fish? Have fish changed in a thousand years?”

“The fish is inside the crispy stuff.”

“Crispy stuff?”

“It's batter. Made of flour and beer—er, ale.”

“It doesn't look like food.”

“Just try it. If you don't like it, we'll get you something else.” Merlin refrained from rolling his eyes. Arthur would have eaten rat stew, probably even after Merlin told him what was in it.

Arthur picked up the fish and took a cautious bite. After chewing and swallowing, he picked up a chip and did the same thing.

“Merlin, this doesn't taste like food.”

“Well, I suppose the deep fryer wasn't invented until fairly recently.”

“I'm going to be ill,” Arthur said.

He did indeed look a little green, so Merlin helped Arthur find the loo.

“I hadn't thought about your stomach not acclimatising. We'll ease you into it,” Merlin mused as Arthur rinsed his mouth out, feeling a little guilty for thinking Arthur was just being picky.

Arthur looked at his pale reflection in the mirror above the sink.

“I think I'm ready to go home.”

The defeat in his voice broke Merlin's heart a little, but he knew that trite reassurance wouldn't help. So he readily agreed, and they went back to the flat, this time taking a taxi. Riding in another car seemed to cheer Arthur up a bit.

That afternoon, after Merlin made Arthur some porridge that he was able to keep down, Arthur asked again about the reason for his return.

Luckily for Merlin, as soon as the words were out of his mouth, Arthur accidentally sat on the remote control and the telly popped on, which then led to a horrifying discussion about the advent of tabloids. Eventually Merlin decided that Arthur was never going to master the concept of the talk show, and that was fine with him.

But the damage was done. Arthur was immediately fascinated with clicking through channels. His favourite things to watch seemed to be adverts, which baffled Merlin, until Arthur caught a Premiership game and was transfixed. Merlin never really understood the appeal of football, but he explained the rules of the game to Arthur as best he could.

Ten minutes later, Arthur was yelling at the telly. “Oh come on! He's clearly faking. That other player barely ran into him!”

The match occupied his attention for a solid hour, and Merlin took the opportunity to curl up at his side. He still couldn't believe that Arthur was really there in the flesh. If Arthur had noticed that Merlin was nearly always touching him, to reassure himself, he hadn't said. Merlin tried not to cling, but he didn't know exactly what had triggered the spell. Just as easily as Arthur had appeared, he could be taken away.

Arthur didn't seem to mind that Merlin stayed so close. Arthur would never had said it out loud, but he was very tactile. Merlin's touch had always calmed him in tense situations. It was an unconscious move on Arthur's part when he slung his arm around Merlin's shoulders. Merlin curled into Arthur's side.

It was only Arthur's growling stomach that broke the feeling of total comfort between them.

“I take it your stomach has recovered?”

“I'm famished. Please tell me you have actual food.”

Merlin had always tended toward simple meals. He'd learned to cook from Gaius, and in all the centuries that had passed, cooking was never a skill he felt a need to hone any more than what he needed. He made a roast chicken for dinner.

“Remember the time I tried to make chicken for Guinevere?” Arthur mused as he watched Merlin work in the kitchen.

Merlin grew quiet. “Yes,” he finally responded.

“I'm sorry. Is it hard for you to remember?”

“No, I—I remember the time you and I spent together. I thought about you daily so I would keep those memories intact.”

“I'm sorry, Merlin. I wish I could understand what it was like for you.”

“That amount of time is hard for anyone to imagine, I think.” Merlin didn't voice how lonely it felt. There weren't really even words that could capture the feeling of being really and truly alone, of continuing to live when everyone you had ever known was long gone. Anyway, it wasn't Arthur's fault; it wasn't his burden. Merlin cleared his throat. “Gwen was a wonderful queen. She and Leon were very happy together. It was a good time for Camelot.”

“Good, good. I—I cared a great deal for Guinevere.”

“I know you did, Arthur.”

“Let me finish, Merlin. I know it was hard for you. It was hard for Leon, too. But it was my duty, and I managed it the best I could. I guess me dying made it a lot easier for Gwen and Leon.”

“Don't say that, Arthur--”

“Merlin, I'm not good at this so if you would just let me finish, then you can interrupt me to your heart's content.”

Merlin was about to retort that that didn't make any sense.

“I loved you. Always. What I felt for Guinevere was nothing in comparison. It was affection that you'd carry for a sister, I imagine, a good sister. I—Merlin—I'm not—you have my whole heart. You know that right?”

Merlin couldn't find the words to respond, so he nodded and crossed the kitchen in three quick steps. He stepped into Arthur's space, the bubble of air and authority that always surrounded him, and kissed him thoroughly. Arthur kissed him back just as fiercely.

“This is nice. Just you and me with no interruptions,” Arthur said as he pulled away looking flushed.

“It is nice. No one could possibly walk in on us. No Gaius. No George...”

Arthur laughed. He never understood why Merlin disliked George—perfect, brass-polishing, ideal servant George.

Merlin pressed himself even closer to Arthur, pushing his thigh between Arthur's so he could get some friction against Arthur, who startled at the touch.

“You were never this forward before.”

“Is it okay?”

“Mmmhmm,” Arthur said against Merlin's lips.

The chicken ended up over-cooked and dried out, but Arthur didn't seem to care about food after Merlin sucked him off right there in the middle of the kitchen.

Over the course of the next few days, they settled into a routine. Arthur watched the telly for a couple hours each morning. He had always been a quick learner, but Merlin was amazed at how quickly he picked up bits of modern speech. In the afternoons, they ventured out into the city. Arthur seemed to get used to the noise and the vastness. They took taxis on occasion, but Merlin didn't think he was ready for the Tube.

Merlin decided after the first shopping incident that he would have to take matters into his own hands. Arthur assured him that if they went to another shop he’d be fine, but Merlin didn’t trust him to not have a spectacular outburst.

So, he took him to the cinema.

“It’s like the telly only bigger and generally the story is contained in two hours. Except for sequels, of course, but most sequels are terrible ploys by the entertainment industry to milk more money out of one idea.”

“Merlin,” Arthur interrupted Merlin’s rant. “I only understood about half of that. You are trying to keep me occupied and out of your way for a couple hours, right?”

“Er, yes.”

“I’m not a child.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’ll be fine.”

As it turned out, Arthur took to Captain America immediately. Merlin wasn't sure how much of the film he understood without context, but he suspected Arthur liked the chiselled, swashbuckling hero.

“You're sure that was all made up?” Arthur asked, after had quite literally swooned over Captain America.

“Entirely a work of fiction.”

“Are you sure? Because a lot of that seemed like magic to me.”

“People do seem to make fiction out of things that magic does naturally,” Merlin mused.

“And those things they were firing that killed people. Those would have been useful when fighting Morgana's army.”

“Well, those are real. A lot of wars have been fought with them, and people who aren't soldiers—modern day knights—have been killed by them.”

“That doesn't sound very honourable.”

“It isn't.”

“Am I ever going to get used to this, Merlin?”

Merlin didn't have a good answer, so he settled for squeezing Arthur's hand.

* * * * *

One morning they went right past the Tower of London.

“Oh!” Arthur looked at it with delight. “Is this where the king lives?”

“We actually have a queen now, but she's more of a figure head. She doesn't really have any power.”

“No power? I was hoping to speak with him, or her I guess, at some point since you won't tell me what's going on.”

“That's really not a good idea. Or a plausible one. You can't just go have an audience with the Queen. Or the Prime Minister—he's the one you'd want to talk to anyway—but they don't hold regular audience with the people.”

“Don't they care? How can they know what their people need?”

“They get reports, I guess? They have agencies set up that take care of a lot, and laws have to be run through a group of people who vote on them.” Merlin almost suggested that it was like the Round Table, but even he couldn't get the words out seriously. He added political parties and elections to the list of things to explain later.

“They don't sound like very good leaders,” Arthur sniffed. “No wonder I came back. Can we go see this tower anyway?”

Merlin hesitated, but Arthur insisted. The Tower was the first place that looked remotely like home to him, and he wasn't going to be denied. Arthur seemed to enjoy himself at first; he was particularly amused by the story the Beefeater told them about the animals that kings received as gifts and that used to be kept in the tower. Merlin made a mental note to show Arthur pictures of lions and elephants. For the first time out in public with Arthur, Merlin started to relax and enjoy himself, that was, until they went into the room of armour and they reached the King Arthur display.

Arthur stopped dead in his tracks.

“Why is my name in that box?”

Merlin slapped his hand against his forehead. It hadn't occurred to him to tell Arthur about the legend he left behind.

“Well, your memory was carried on after Camlann--”

“This says that little is known about the real King Arthur, if there ever was a King Arthur.”

“Well, it has been a long time. It's hard for people to really think about there being a time before cars, let alone a medieval era when their country didn't even exist.”

“Med-evil? They think I'm evil?”

“No, no, that's just the name of the time period. And it's e-v-a-l, not e-v-i-l anyway. It's from the Latin _medium aevumi_ . But they only started calling it 'medieval' in the 19  th century or so.”

“Finally, you use words I understand. It's just the name of the period when we, well, I lived?”

“Yes. Like you learned about Xerxes and Cicero and Caesar.”

Arthur's jaw dropped, but he quickly recovered. “Medieval studies, eh? So people study me?”

“Sort of. There are a lot of stories. You're more of a myth than anything else.”

“Well, why have you never corrected them?”

“What authority do I have?”

“You're Merlin. Your name is on this, too,” Arthur pointed. “You were there!”

“Arthur if I claimed to be a 1400 year old sorcerer, I'd get thrown into a looney bin.”

“A bin? I thought you told me that's where people throw their rubbish.”

“They'd lock me away. Like prison, only for people whose minds are damaged. Arthur, people don't even know about magic anymore.”

“They don't?”

“No, magic isn't even a myth like King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. People think it's totally made up like a children's story.”

“Ah,” Arthur said knowingly. Whatever connection he seemed to make was enough to satisfy him into silence.

They went through the rest of the display with him loudly pointing out everything that was incorrect. It got to the point where Merlin had to explain that he was a Medieval Studies professor, and out of Arthur's earshot, that he was a touch bitter about not being contacted to help with the display. The tourists seemed to accept that explanation, but Merlin still had to herd Arthur out of the exhibit under protest.

Merlin woke up that night with a throbbing headache. It wasn't the first one he had gotten. In fact, they were getting far more frequent. Too frequent to ignore. As Merlin rubbed his temples, he considered some of the possible scenarios.

There was supposedly a stone that was able to absorb the magic out of anything it touched, but Merlin had spent nearly a century trying to track it down about 500 years prior and was all but convinced it was a myth. The more disturbing possibility was that the Earth itself was taking its magic back. There had been an ancient story about the goddess Gaia exacting her revenge on those who didn't protect her. The most likely possibility Merlin had come up with was that twenty-first century technology changed the Earth's electromagnetic field so much that magic was just starting to backfire. Unfortunately most of his magical texts had been written before electricity had been harnessed by human beings.

One thing Merlin was sure of was that at some point the balance the old religion required to work had been obliterated.

What it all had to do with Arthur, Merlin couldn't be sure.

Merlin knew they needed to talk about it. He knew that he needed to show Arthur the old texts and teach him about magic—properly this time, not in a way tainted by Uther's bigotry. But Arthur was finally _there_ , they were together in a time and a place where they could actually be together, and Merlin figured after nearly 1500 years, he was allowed to be a little selfish. If his time was running out, then he wanted the last of it spent with Arthur.

Merlin liked seeing Arthur discover modernity. He liked seeing him get used to the future. It was like seeing the world with a whole different set of eyes, and Merlin could see how little certain things changed, and how vastly different technology and the population explosion had made everything else, even the way people thought.

The first time Arthur fucked into Merlin using lubricant was life-altering for Merlin. They had used oil before, but mostly saliva and whatever Merlin could magic without Arthur noticing. Having a whole bottle of lube at his disposal, and in spite of Arthur’s claims that he had 'self-control', Merlin's arse was so sore after a day spent doing nothing but fucking, it hurt to sit down for another two days after.

But Merlin couldn't complain. When Arthur was curved around his back, his arm wrapped around Merlin's waist, murmuring into Merlin's ear as he pushed slowly in and out, there wasn't anything in the universe but the two of them, fates be damned.

In true Arthurian fashion, Arthur mostly seemed interested in trying all the food. Curries made him sick. Spices of any sort really didn't agree with him. He was obsessed with pineapple, and once his stomach got more accustomed to modern means of cooking, bacon. He didn't care for pizza, but cheeseburgers became a fast favourite. The first time he tried a Polo he nearly choked and swore off sweeties, but then he had chocolate.

Arthur discovering chocolate was a revelation. Merlin had forgotten the first time he had gotten his own taste of chocolate, but the bliss on Arthur's face and the moan that followed made him wish he could remember.

Of course, Arthur still asked questions about his return, and grew more impatient with Merlin's deflections. If he'd known about the headaches, he would have demanded to know even sooner.

As it was, it was only a week after his return, when Arthur finally got fed up and decided to play dirty. He confronted Merlin after sex. Not only did he confront Merlin, he trapped Merlin on his back on the mattress, making a cage above him with his body. In a full body hold, Merlin couldn't move and with Arthur's naked body pinning him in place, he didn't really want to go anywhere.

“Merlin, we're going to talk about this.”

“Talk about what?” Merlin asked in a desperate ploy to stay coy.

“I know you're avoiding it. I also know you know I'm not going to just pretend like my return was a fluke of luck. Why am I here? Why now?”

“The truth is, Arthur, I don't know.”

“Bullshit.”

“Where did you learn _that_ word?”

“Someone said it in one of the films I've watched. Did I use it right?”

“You did. I didn't realise I should be sheltering you from swear words.”

Arthur stuck his tongue out. “I'm not a child, and quit trying to change the subject. You must have _some_ insight into all of this. You're the oldest man alive.”

“Ouch. You're bringing my age into this?”

“Merlin!”

Merlin sighed. Arthur's “king” face was on. “Well, I have a few ideas, working theories really...”

“What aren't you telling me?”

“Will you let me up first?”

“You're a flight risk.”

“Fine, this is ridiculous by the way. I didn't want to tell you everything right away. I thought I'd ease you into it. You see, Morgana was involved with some really dark magic.”

“Morgana?” Arthur nearly shouted as he sat back on his heels, releasing Merlin. “I wake up after a thousand years and she's still a pain in my arse.”

“Well, she didn't come back exactly, not the way you did, but she was very powerful. She had a lot of followers who were swayed by her magic. When magic is used in dark ways, it plays by different rules than natural magic. It's almost as if it takes the rules set out by the old religion to maintain balance and twists them.”

“You're talking about magic as if it's sentient.”

“Well, in a way it is. It's tied in with destiny. The consequences of using dark spells are always devastating because it angers fate, but often times the caster of the spell doesn't bear the brunt of consequences or even intend them. It's like a wildfire. It's even caused wars.”

“Oh,” Arthur said quietly.

“This is why I didn't want to tell you.”

“I would have willingly laid down my life for Camelot at any time. Even before Morgana knew about her magic.”

“I know.”

“You think her magic is behind the reason for my return?”

With Arthur distracted, Merlin sat up and scooted back against the headboard. Merlin wasn't exactly sure yet how she did it, but signs of Morgana's magic had appeared in bubbles over the years—an assassination here, a threat to the monarchy there. Merlin was mostly convinced that Queen Mary _was_ Morgana reincarnated. Even if she didn't remember being Morgana, her magical signature was written all over the spells Merlin had seen, and sometimes deflected. Though Morgana hadn't returned in the flesh, the magic was too concentrated and specific to be a coincidence. When magic was tainted by darkness, the traces it left behind were unmistakable.

“The rules of the old religion haven't gone away even if people don't recognize them. There has to be balance, and where there isn't? Well, I don't know this for certain, but it seems that once magic is used for darkness, it never fully recovers. Her magic lingers in the world, and I'm sure it's connected to this somehow. It always is.”

“Merlin, how many times has this--”

“I'll tell you later.” Merlin waved his hand. He had so many stories he could tell Arthur about his life and his work over the last millennium and a half, but he had gotten so used to being an invisible presence in the world, telling them would disrupt the identity Merlin had adopted over the years.

“So my return has something to do with Morgana's dark magic. You don't know anything else?”

Merlin started to form a lie, but he stopped himself. If Arthur's return wasn't a mistake, then he needed his help and keeping him in the dark just so Merlin could have all day sex marathons wasn't how he wanted to face the potential end of the world—not really.

“Well, remember how I told you about electricity?”

“Of course.”

“Well, it turns out that electricity is just a bunch of tiny particles moving really fast.”

Arthur stared dumbly. Particle physics wasn't going to be one of his strong subjects. Merlin added microscopes to the list of things to teach Arthur about.

“It's also energy—heat, light, like fire or the sun—it's all energy, movement. It's almost like magic. It took me years to figure out that they could work together—magic seems to like mingling with electricity more than anything else—they're just harnessed differently. People need generators and machines for things that I could do myself.” Magic could keep Merlin's mobile charged for weeks.

“So why don't you use it? You know, I haven't seen you magic anything since I got here. I thought it must be because you couldn't do it in public, but you haven't done anything in your flat rooms either.”

Merlin stared at his lap. “My magic seems to be failing.”

“Oh, Merlin. I—I'm sorry. I didn't know.”

Arthur reached over to lift Merlin's chin. The understanding on Arthur's face made Merlin ache. It had only been in the last moments of Arthur's life that he knew about Merlin's magic, but he understood, intuitively, from all his experiences with magic, that it was a part of who Merlin was.

“I think maybe it's also connected to the reason why you, er, came back.”

“Is all magic failing?”

Merlin knew what Arthur was thinking. He wanted to reassure him that he didn't wake up just because the spell failed. Arthur needed a purpose, and to not have one was going to make him feel hopeless and defeated, and Merlin wasn't about to deal with a pouting Arthur again.

“I can't be sure. Since I'm still alive, and all the other magic-users I know of are still alive, I don't think it's a total failure. The fundamental principle of magic is that it can't disappear. There's a balance to _all_ things. The old religion was based on maintaining that balance for a reason. I think the Earth's magic is just being misdirected, and there's some kind of dark magic behind whatever is doing it.”

“Is that all you know?”

"Well, I can show you my research. I have a few leads. I have a few contacts looking into some things for me, but those are the nuts and bolts, yes.”

“What do nuts have to do with this? Every time I think I'm getting the hang of the place, you go and say something utterly absurd.”

“You said the very same thing to me in Camelot, you know.”

That brought back the smile to Arthur's face. “So you're still a weirdo in the future.”

“You _would_ put it that way.”

* * * * *

They got no closer to piecing any more of the puzzle together that day, though Merlin did reluctantly show Arthur some of his research. He had a very carefully tracked database of other magic users left in the world, along with an archive of the dark magic bubbles that had crept up over the centuries, and magic artefacts.

By the end of the day, Arthur was horrified, for Merlin's sake, at all of the destruction and terrors the world had faced in Merlin's lifetime.

To try to cheer Arthur up and distract them both, Merlin took him to a gay pub that night. It wasn't a club with music and men in painted-on trousers; Arthur would probably never be ready for that, but a pub with rainbow flags and kitschy knickknacks and drinks named after Judy Garland seemed like something Arthur could handle.

There were two men snogging in front of the pub when they approached.

Arthur froze in his tracks. “You can do that out in the open?”

Seeing couples holding hands still scandalized Arthur, so two men snogging on a city street was a shock to Arthur's senses. The man had run his sword through men's hearts and wiped the blade off on his sleeve, but seeing public displays of affection appalled him.

“It's generally considered polite not to, but young men and women do sometimes. Two men couldn't do that everywhere in the world, and some places are more open than others, but in London? In this part of the city? At this time of night? Yeah. It's not totally uncommon.”

Arthur gaped. The men, probably hearing Arthur's gasp, broke apart and looked at their audience.

“You got a problem, mate?” one of them asked puffing up his chest.

That was a gesture even Arthur understood, but Arthur surprised Merlin once again by not posturing back. Instead, he put up his hands.

“What? No! No problem! I'm actually stupidly in love with the one here.” He gestured to Merlin. “But where I come from, you can't show it in public at all. You'd be put in the stocks.”

The men looked sceptical, but it did seem clear that Arthur wasn't going to harass them. “You're together?”

Arthur had never been overly affectionate. He was never ashamed of loving Merlin—it wasn't the best kept secret around the castle—but he was always a bit ashamed to be different. Something about the knight mentality ruled him. Perpetually standing out because of his birthright, he longed to fit in. He boldly reached for Merlin's hand and gripped it tightly in his own.

“We were destined for each other,” Arthur said proudly. Merlin beamed beside him, hoping that the men would back off and take Arthur as some repressed country bumpkin, in London for the first time.

Both men still looked at them with confusion, but the one who hadn't spoken put his hand on the other's shoulder and said, “Cheers, then, yeah?”

Merlin smiled and nodded, and then dragged Arthur into the pub.

“Next thing you know, you're going to be kissing me in public,” he said casually over his shoulder.

Arthur nearly tripped over his feet.

There wasn't kissing, but after the third time he caught another guy checking Merlin out, Arthur got in Merlin's space and scooted his stool around the table. By the end of the evening, his arm was around Merlin's waist, and it was very clear to everyone in the pub that they were together.

Merlin knew that Arthur loved him, but for others to see it too? It was the best Merlin had felt in a very, very long time.

* * * * *

It was over two weeks since Arthur's return when Merlin woke up feeling a surge of magic coursing through him. It was such a rare occurrence anymore that Merlin was overjoyed until he realized that a surge of magic that strong could be any number of things, most of them horrible.

He took out his old favourite spell book and filled his scrying bowl with water. He put a few drops of liquid clarity into the water and stirred as he recited the incantation. It was a rush to feel magic surging up, from deep within to the very tips of his fingers. It was so much a part of him that he never noticed how much it was _in_ him until it started failing.

The image that appeared in the bowl was just about the last one he would have guessed, but it was probably one of the best.

“Arthur!” he shouted. “Arthur we need to go to the park.”

Arthur groaned from the bedroom. “Why are you still so obnoxious in the mornings? Give me an hour's more sleep.”

“This isn't me being obnoxious, this is serious! I need to go to the park. You'll be very, very glad when you find out why.”

So Arthur let himself be manhandled out of bed and dressed. The crisp morning woke him up a little as they walked. Merlin explained what a park was, but he wouldn't even hint at what they were going there to find. He didn't want to miss the look on Arthur's face when he discovered what it was.

Sure enough, the park looked just as the bowl had revealed.

At first glance, Gwaine and Percival had taken to the 21st century like ducks to water. They were kicking a football around like they had grown up playing.

“Gwaine? Percival?” Arthur's voice full of disbelief and delight rang out in the quiet morning.

Both men turned to see Arthur and Merlin, who were now jogging toward their old friends.

“Arthur! Merlin!” Gwaine called, bounding over. He first wrapped Merlin in a sweaty embrace before moving onto Arthur. Percival held back a little, with an eyebrow raised at Merlin. They shared a knowing look before Merlin was being lifted in the air by Percival.

“So it worked then,” Percival said in a low voice as he set Merlin down.

“So it seems,” Merlin whispered back.

Percival joined Gwaine and Arthur, who were doing the knightly thumping of shoulders. Merlin took them both in. They each looked as they had they day they died. Percival looked slightly more aged than Gwaine, but his life had also been cut so short, Gwaine and Arthur couldn't detect the difference. It dawned on Merlin that they were both in football jerseys and trainers.

“You've been here a day and you already have footie loyalties?”

“A day? We've been here nearly a fortnight.”

Merlin scratched his head. A fortnight? He should have felt the spell trigger immediately.

“How did you know where to go? Where did you get those clothes? And a football?”

“Your dragon, Merlin,” Gwaine said, as if that explained everything.

“You mean the dragon who hasn't been on speaking terms with me since 1878?”

“Unless you know more dragons.”

“Only one who watches footie,” Merlin said drily.

“He gave us a tutorial, set us up with a flat, telly-vision. He has a Facebook page,” Gwaine continued.

Merlin slapped a hand to his forehead.

“What _is_ a Facebook?” Arthur asked before looking at Merlin accusingly.

“I'm not really sure, but the dragon seemed chuffed to have a 'page' in this book,” Gwaine answered for Merlin.

“It's a website,” Merlin said with a groan.

Three blank looks stared back at him.

“On the internet,” Merlin added.

“Perce and I keep hearing about this net,” Gwaine said. “What is it? Why are there books in it?”

So that was how Merlin spent the rest of the morning back at his flat attempting to explain 21st century technology to three medieval knights, two of whom Merlin had never even seen pick up a quill. Eventually Merlin made a flippant comment about the internet being easy access to pornography, which made everything click into place for Gwaine, so he took over the explanation—and control of Merlin’s laptop—which included a thorough exploration of Redtube.

“But why would _you_ want to watch other men do that?” Arthur asked when he noticed that Gwaine kept clicking on the gay porn videos as he demonstrated website navigation.

Gwaine almost looked sheepish, as sheepish as Gwaine could look. “What do you think me and Perce _did_ on long patrol missions?”

“Oh,” Arthur flushed. “I didn't know.”

Gwaine shrugged. “I love women. I just love this big lummox over here, too. Sometimes I love both at the same time. It's not complicated.”

Merlin stifled a laugh. Gwaine might not have been able to turn on the computer himself, but in less than two weeks, he achieved the sexual revolution that still hadn't reached a majority of the world.

“So, your flat is just 'round the corner from ours?” Merlin changed the subject.

Percival confirmed that it was.

“So, my dragon, which I'm sure he'd love to hear you call him, by the way, knows where I live, and he set you up near me on purpose. How is it that we haven't run into each other before now?”

Percival scratched the back of his neck and looked down at his lap. “We haven't exactly gone out much, if you catch my drift, and now that Gwaine knows about this internet pornography thing...”

Merlin shook his head and sighed. “Well, don't fuck yourselves too stupid. I'm going to need your help.”

“Arthur not taking care of you proper, eh, Merlin? Because if I thought for a second the king over here would share, we'd show you a good time. The things Percival can do with that big--”

Arthur huffed and punched Gwaine in the arm, effectively cutting him off.

Merlin flushed. “That's not what I meant and you know it. Didn't you wonder at all why you returned?”

“Oh, well, Perce just told me that you had something to do with it and we should wait for you to find us.”

Arthur perked up, and Merlin realised he had never gotten around to filling Arthur in on Gwaine's death in battle.

“Percival, you knew about this?” Arthur asked.

Merlin looked over at Percival questioningly, and Percival shook his head slightly.

“Well, he was with me at Camlann when I cast the spell on Gwaine.”

“My wounds weren't quite as immediate,” Percival said. “So I sort of agreed to it. I—I trusted Merlin.”

Gwaine gave Percival a strange look, but Arthur seemed to accept Percival's story.

“And anyway, it seems to have worked,” Percival added a little too brightly. “We're here aren't we?”

“So what is it that you need our help with?” Gwaine asked.

“Well, I'm not exactly sure--”

“But it probably involves Morgana,” Arthur finished for Merlin.

“Morgana? I thought you said no one else knew this spell,” Percival questioned.

“Well, it's not _really_ Morgana, but I think it's some dark magic that she started back in your time. I don't actually know exactly what is happening yet.” Merlin told them about how the spell was tied to a great need for the person's return.

“However you need us to help, we're here for you,” Percival said after the explanation, while Gwaine was still busy using some colourful words to describe Morgana.

“But meanwhile, do you think you might be able to set up this internet in our place? I, er, oh, fuck it, you all know I want to watch more porn.”

So Merlin took Gwaine and Percival to an electronics store and got them set up with a laptop and mobile account. They went back to their place after. Sure enough, Gwaine and Percival's flat was a few streets over from Merlin's, and it had obviously been furnished straight from the IKEA catalogue.

“I still don't understand what you've been doing for money.”

“Kay left a pile of it in a box on the short table,” Gwaine pointed to the coffee table.

“K? Like the letter?”

“I dunno how he spells it. He just said that's what he goes by now. He said something about it being a shame the surname doesn't get used more.”

Merlin shook his head. It wasn't as if Kilgharrah could get inside the apartment himself, or assemble Swedish furniture; that meant he must have had some kind of minion doing work for him in the human world. Merlin thought he knew all the magic-users in England, though, which meant the dragon was hiding in a different country and would be even more difficult to track down. Then again, if Kilgharrah had internet access, he couldn't be totally off the grid. Here Merlin was, the last Dragonlord, and he was going to have to track down the last dragon by his IP address.

But, if Kilgharrah was helping Gwaine and Percival, then he couldn't possibly be too angry with Merlin.

As soon as the new computer was up and running, Merlin and Arthur knew they were seconds away from a live porn show, so they took their leave. As Merlin was shutting the door of the flat behind him they heard Gwaine say, “Now get over here, big boy.”

Arthur was quiet as they walked back to the flat, but Merlin knew him well enough to give him time. He assumed Arthur was processing the added return of Gwaine and Percival. It certainly confused the legend of Arthur being the one fated to save Camelot in their time of need. Then again, nothing said he couldn't have help.

So, when Arthur spoke up again, Merlin was taken aback.

“Did you ever have sex with Gwaine?”

“What? No, of course not! Why would you ask that?”

“Well, before, there was Gwen in the picture, and you and I had to be so discreet, so I told myself that I wouldn't get angry if you ever wanted to seek company elsewhere.”

“You know I never did.”

"I didn't know,” Arthur insisted.

“Well, no, I never did. For one, there wasn't enough time. I was always bailing you or one of the knights out of some magical kerfuffle. For another, I've never wanted anyone else but you.”

“So you don't want to take Gwaine up on his offer?”

“The only way I'd take Gwaine up on his offer is if you were there too.”

“Merlin, I had no idea you were so kinky. Is that—is that something you want?”

“I'd never thought about it before. It's not really something I want, but if we get into an end of the world scenario...”

Arthur snorted. Then his voice got serious. “How likely is that?”

“Not likely. I don't think. Probably.”

“How reassuring.”

Merlin wasn't terribly sure there wouldn't be an end of the world scenario, but he wasn't about to tell Arthur that. So he used the best diversionary tactic he had in his repertoire, distracting Arthur with a blow job.

It had always worked in Camelot. It seemed to work in London, too.

Arthur always startled when Merlin would just get down on his knees, pulling Arthur's trousers down as he went. Arthur would always try not to give in—it made him vulnerable and distracted. But eventually he would push aside his reports or his maps of the borderlands and let Merlin take him deep in his mouth.

Merlin had never forgotten what it felt like to have Arthur's hands running through his hair. Calloused still from years of sword work, they were so gentle, careful not to pull or tangle, even as Arthur's control started to slip.

“Merlin I know what you're do--” Merlin cut Arthur off by tracing his finger around Arthur's arsehole.

“Gods,” Arthur groaned.

At that point, Arthur stopped trying to stop Merlin and started thrusting his hips forward ever-so slightly. The corners of Merlin's lips tried to twitch up. The way Arthur gave up all his pretences and let go was still beautiful after all these years.

Arthur reciprocated after, and quite thoroughly. They were both too exhausted to deal anymore with the past or the future. For Merlin, he was here, now, with Arthur, and that was what mattered.

After a quick dinner, they fell back in bed again, not with any intent other than to enjoy the fact that they could. Merlin put on a film and tucked himself against Arthur’s side, and they slowly drifted off to sleep that way.

Then Merlin awoke in the middle of the night with another headache.

If he was being honest with himself, little signs had been cropping up for years. It wasn't coincidental that everything started getting worse with the onset of the industrial revolution. Magic was a natural element, like water or fire. You could harness it but it moved on its own. Electricity didn't just appear; it had to be generated with earth and fire. Unlike the other Earthly elements of the old religion, magic was almost sentient. It was willing to manipulate and be manipulated. Though electricity generation shifted where magic was directed, it didn't destroy magic, it just redistributed it—machines were manipulating it. This meant that magic-users had less available to them, and probably caused fewer natural-born sorcerers like himself be born.

But this was different. This was as if magic was being drained from _any_ use at all or something was cancelling it out. Magic could be blocked if there were other energies in the way, like the way sound waves cancelled each other out. But magic was trying to push through, like the surge Merlin felt when Arthur returned, and that was what made Merlin think the blockage was intentional.

Merlin put the kettle on. So long as he was up, he might as well have a cuppa. As he was stirring the milk in, he thought through the most likely possibility.

It had to be someone keeping magic-users from accessing magic. Whether people knew it or not, magic was the undercurrent of everything. It intermingled with the moving particles. It didn't always make itself known. Most people couldn't see it, but it was swirling in and out of all things. It was unpredictable and chaotic. It could be used for good things, but using magic took an amount of faith. Manipulate it too much and it would backfire on you. There was a balance in all things, and how magic decided to settle that balance was beyond Merlin's 1400 years.

So far, only large concentrations of magic had been harmed, but it was troubling. The failure of magic either meant the end of the world or someone doing something very bad.

The more troubling thing Merlin couldn't understand was why. Why would someone want to drain the Earth of usable magic and put it into the industrial complex? If there was one thing that united all the remaining magic-users in the world, it was in their desire not to keep any of their kin away from magic. The more likely culprit was someone who knew about magic and had an Uther-like fear of it, and they were manipulating dark magic to do it.

Merlin curled up on the couch and looked at the piles of magic books he had been leafing through over the last few months to no avail. Merlin _did_ want to figure out the reason why. He didn't think it was a fluke that Arthur had returned, but how was he needed?

Merlin was lost in thought when Arthur padded out into the living room. When Arthur cleared his throat, Merlin looked up. Arthur was half-asleep and rumpled and Merlin's heart ached. In that moment, it didn't matter why Arthur was back, because Merlin needed him and that was reason enough.

“What's wrong?”

“I'm sorry, did I wake you?”

“The lack of icy feet woke me.”

“I had a headache.”

Arthur narrowed his eyes.

“I know you're keeping things from me, Merlin. And not just the code to unlock your mobile thingy.”

“I can't tell you what I don't know. It has something to do with me losing touch with my magic, but I just don't know anything else. I don't know why it causes headaches and not toothaches or stomach-aches, or why it has anything to do with my body at all.”

“I'm just worried about you,” Arthur confessed.

“I've always been this, this freak,” Merlin said. “And now no one knows anything about my anatomy and how it interacts with the magical energy. Magic users are like a dying species, and the ones I've been able to reach don't know anything about this either. Everyone's in hiding because they're scared. I'd tell you if I could. Believe me. I wish I understood this more than anyone.”

Merlin slumped down in his chair. He didn't want to burden Arthur with any of it. Arthur would take it on as his responsibility, because he was ridiculous and valiant even when his back was against the wall. He fought harder when he felt helpless.

“I'm sorry,” Arthur said tentatively.

“It's not your fault. I just—I worry too.”

Arthur stood up and reached out his hand. “Come back to bed.”

Merlin took his hand and let Arthur pull him up. He knew Arthur was scared, too. He could feel it in the way Arthur gripped Merlin's hand and the way he wrapped his arms around Merlin a little too tightly.

Of course, Merlin also selfishly wanted to spend every moment he could with Arthur. Every second was a luxury that was almost unfathomable after so much time apart. But now he had three out-of-place knights on his hands, and Percival and Gwaine were just as curious about what was happening as Arthur. The next day, Merlin sat them all down and tried to fill in Gwaine and Percival with the account of magic he gave Arthur.

“If these particles are too small to see, then how do we know they're there?” Gwaine asked.

“Merlin told me they have these things called—called—tinyscopes?”

“Microscopes.”

“Right, that, and they make it so you can look through a tube and see tiny things biggerized.”

Gwaine and Percival both turned to Merlin for confirmation.

“Well, essentially, yes. It's the same principle behind a looking glass, but you look at things up close.”

“Can we see the magic particles then?”

“Er, well, no. For one, you'd need an electron microscope and those aren't exactly readily available for just anyone to use. For another, I don't think you can see it unless you're a natural magic-user.”

“So do you have any idea at all what could be causing this magic blockage?”

“It makes the most sense that it's happening in the energy industry.”

“What's an indus tree?” Gwaine asked.

Merlin backtracked with an economics lesson that he knew went over all three of their heads.

“So those rectangles I see people sliding in those black machines in stores actually take out money from their bank account?”

“Well, if it's a debit card,” Merlin said. “It might just take money out of a balance of money that they pay back later.”

“So you can pay for things when you don't have the money?” Arthur asked.

“Well, you have to pay it back with interest.”

“I assume you'd be interested in what you were buying,” Gwaine said.

“No, no, not that type of interest. You have to pay back more than you took out. It's more like borrowing on the condition that you’ll pay back more.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Remind me not to tell you about the stock market.”

“The stocks _were_ in the market.”

Merlin had to excuse himself from the room to scream into a pillow. Needless to say, they made no progress that day, and by the end of it, all three men were convinced that economics was imaginary, and that they needed to go back to the gold standard.

Not that they understood what that meant.

* * * * *

Merlin needed a day off of trying to figure out how and why he was suddenly living with three medieval knights, so the next day, he finagled his way into getting a set of tickets to a premiership footie match.

It was either going to go well or be a complete anachronistic disaster, and they were going to get kicked out of the arena.

Merlin wondered how Percival and Gwaine managed two weeks without him helping them navigate the 21st century, but then Gwaine mentioned that “K” had kindly supplied their flat with lubricant and Merlin nearly put his fingers in his ears to keep from hearing details.

“I liked it better when sex wasn't something we talked about,” Merlin huffed.

“Internet pornography is wasted on you,” Gwaine said sadly.

But Arthur shot Merlin a warm smile.

They managed to get to the arena without too much trouble. Luckily, they had taken to following Merlin's lead. It was hard for Arthur, but he'd get two steps ahead of everyone and then realise he didn't know what he was doing or where he was going. It took Arthur and Percival a few tube stops before they realized that it was not the convention for men to stand when women entered a train car—a fact that Gwaine found hilarious.

“People are staring at you buffoons.”

“Well, people now are rude. I was raised to show respect for ladies.”

“There are a lot of women who would kick you in the balls for even thinking that was respectful,” Merlin said, studiously not looking at Gwaine for fear of bursting into laughter.

“Well,” Arthur huffed. “Then they're rude, too.”

Percival was more good-natured about it. “That's something I don't understand yet, Merlin. Women and men seem more alike in some ways, but still totally different in others.”

As he said it, Gwaine was smiling suggestively at a woman across the aisle on the train car. The glare she shot Gwaine could have turned a troll to stone.

Arthur laughed. “At least women are still capable of having good taste.”

Merlin didn't miss the way Percival's hand curved over Gwaine's knee in response, or the way Gwaine pressed closer to Percival's side. Merlin didn't understand how Percival could watch Gwaine flirt his way through so many other people, but then, Gwaine wouldn't be Gwaine if he wasn't flirting.

The next major incident was going through the metal and explosive detectors at the arena. For three men who were used to walking around with kilos of metal on their bodies, the whole concept was more bizarre to them than anything else they encountered.

“Why do they care if I have on metal? I'm walking around here completely defenceless and unarmed—with no mail and no sword, and they're worried if I have on a belt?”

“I'm with the king on this one,” Gwaine said. “That man had his hands all over me and then had the nerve to be offended that it made my cock interested. You don't touch a man like that without intent. You just don't.”

“What do people do with metal that has everyone so concerned?” Percival asked.

“Well, weapons mostly, I guess. I think they're more concerned with explosives. There have been a few scary incidents with bombings.”

“What's a bom-ing?”

“Oh, right, an explosion. It's a big er, eruption.”

Blank stares.

“Like Morgana would do to break up rocks and create cave-ins, but without using magic.”

Three slightly less sceptical stares.

“Are there a lot of these explo-juns then?” Arthur asked.

"Luckily they're rare here, but in other parts of the world, they happen regularly. They're worse than Morgana's spells—far more destructive.”

“You said there weren't attacks on the throne or the, whatever you called him, the prime mightier?”

“Minister, and no, it doesn't work that way so much anymore, but people still attack each other for power and, well, religion.” Merlin really didn't want to have a discussion about religion at a footie match, and he tried to think of anything to say that would steer the conversation away.

But naturally Arthur picked up on it. “You mean like my father's fight against magic-users.”

Sometimes Merlin forgot how insightful Arthur could be. Arthur could be just as thick as any knight, and would rush foolhardily into a situation without a thought to his own well-being, but he was also a strategiser. He saw the big picture on a battlefield, or setting up a camp for a travelling army, or even making supply cart checkpoints more efficient. Merlin often lamented to himself that Arthur truly would have been a great king if given more of a chance.

Merlin really _hadn't_ meant to dredge up Uther, or even make the comparison, but of course that's where Arthur's mind would go. He hadn't had well over a millennium to understand that Uther was acting out of pain and fear.

“There's something else that's going after magic-users now that's a lot more subtle than Uther. It's not an act of war,” Merlin reasoned.

“Subtle that man was not,” Gwaine snorted. “No offense, Arthur.”

“I am fully aware of my father's shortcomings,” Arthur said through gritted teeth.

“It's okay, Arthur,” Merlin whispered leaning over to nudge Arthur's shoulder. “I know your father was just trying to protect his people.”

Arthur turned to look at Merlin square in the eyes. Merlin looked back, hoping that Arthur could see that he was being truthful.

“Thank you,” Arthur murmured back, but there was something in his voice that told Merlin the topic wasn't closed.

Once the match began, the three knights started talking about the game and trying to learn all the players, and the rules and how to tell if someone was offside. Merlin chimed in when he could, but he mostly settled back in his seat and enjoyed a few blissful minutes where everything felt normal for once. In fact, it was the first time in ages he could remember not feeling horribly out of place.

Of course, it was short-lived.

“Say, Merlin, doesn't that look familiar?” Percival was pointing to one of the advertisement banners along the pitch. Merlin realized that Percival was talking about the logo for one of England's major energy corporations.

“It does look familiar. Do you know anything about it?”

“I think I remember seeing it with Morgana. Maybe carved into a wall in one of those caves she used to hide in. Would that make any sense?”

“It might, depending on what the wall was made out of. Certain rocks have properties that make them very receptive to magic. I don't know all the dark spells that Morgana learned from Morgause, but I'll look in my books for that symbol when I get home.”

“Why don't you just google it?” Gwaine asked causally.

“I—how do you know about googling?”

“Even I know about googling, Merlin,” Arthur said. “Duh.”

“Oh shut up. You were both afraid of the turnstile getting on the tube.”

“I was not!”

“You made me go through first!”

“We were just being polite.”

"And you were being polite when the automatic sink made you shriek like a little girl?” Gwaine asked pointedly at Arthur.

“What about you and the candy floss?” Percival piped in.

Merlin rubbed at his temples, regretting that he brought the turnstile up in the first place. The three knights could have a pissing contest over anything.

“If you all stop bickering, I'll buy you all beer after the match. As much as you want.”

The promise of getting happily pissed shut them up, which made getting them through the crowd far easier.  

Google unfortunately turned out to be rather useless for looking up magic symbols. There was bad information on the internet about everything from how to properly boil an egg, to the actual cause of the French Revolution, to which boy band member was sleeping with which model. So Merlin looked up everything he could about the symbol in his rather impressive library of magic books. It wasn't in his own beloved spell book that was now carefully kept in archive quality plastic or in his oldest encyclopaedia.

He finally found it in a book of magical creatures of all things. It seemed to be associated with the Dochraid, which Merlin didn't fully understand. The Dochraid wouldn't have any interest in the corporate dealings of humans, but something about it seemed to fit.

The symbol itself was definitely an ancient rune used in performing dark spells, spells the Dochraid could use to draw magic from the very Earth itself. The fact that an energy company was using it in their logo couldn't be a coincidence.

The major failing of Merlin's magic had to have started with the collapse of the Big Six Energy Suppliers that controlled most of the country's energy. The merger had scandalised the country, but it had seemed to be the only solution that wouldn't have ended in a worse economic collapse. Merlin had followed the news story, but since they weren't changing the mechanisms with which they got energy into homes, he hadn't considered it affecting anything other than the company name on his bill.

But as Merlin thought more about it, he realised that his skin never failed to prickle when he walked by their headquarters. It was a possible sign there was powerful magic happening in that building.

Merlin remembered there being a woman in charge of the merger who had been in the headlines, so he got back online and found out everything he could about M. LeFay.

The media stories about her mostly had to do with the merger. She was the youngest CEO to ever be in charge of an energy supplier. Her rise to the top had been unprecedented, and though there was a lot of scepticism about the merger, _she_ was generally given a favourable report. Apparently her father had been particularly ruthless, so she was considered a “breath of fresh air” by the media.

Of course there were some nastier stories about her sleeping her way to the top, but the consensus seemed positive—almost too positive, in retrospect, the account of her too canned.

Merlin looked up pictures of her. Suspiciously, there weren't many, just a few from her teenage years, mostly from social events attended by the elite—old money and the nouveau riche. Her family was old money; the LeFay name was French, but her family had been established in England for centuries. Her upbringing had consisted of boarding schools and occasional public appearances, probably to make her father appear more personable. Unlike so many children of the elite, she was scandal-free. Merlin almost gave up until he noticed that there was something common in every single image. She always wore a ruby ring on her first finger.

He couldn't zoom in too far to get details, but the setting looked ornate, far too ornate for twenty-first century fashion.

“I've seen that somewhere,” Merlin muttered.

He called Arthur over and asked him if it looked familiar.

“Why would it look familiar to me?”

“Because it is definitely not modern.”

Arthur squinted at the picture. “Can you, I don't know, biggerize it anymore?”

Merlin tried not to laugh. “That's as biggerized as I can get it.”

“You don't have to tease me. I'm sorry I don't have modern lingo perfected.”

“I wasn't teasing!”

Arthur crossed his arms and glared.

“Okay, I was teasing a little. I'm sorry. It was just a perfect word. Really, Arthur, you've adapted so well that I already forget sometimes that you made such a massive time jump. It's a compliment more than anything.”

The corners of Arthur's mouth twitched up. “Really? You're not just saying that.”

Merlin put his hands on Arthur's shoulders and looked him square in the eye. “I'm really, really not.”

Although it wasn't Merlin's intent, apparently earnestness was a turn on for Arthur, because Merlin soon found himself naked with Arthur's weight on top of him and Arthur's hardness rubbing against him. Arthur was starting to be more comfortable initiating sex and Merlin was so on board with the turn of events, he went with it. When Arthur finally wrapped his hand around both of them at once, Merlin had almost forgotten what had gotten them there in the first place.

But his post-orgasmic mind started to see through the fog. Merlin shot straight up, almost elbowing Arthur right in the face.

“I've got it! I know where I've seen it!”

“Seen what? What are you going on about?” Arthur groaned.

“I just remembered where I'd seen the ring before.” Merlin jumped off the couch and went over to his bookshelf completely starkers. He pulled out the first book on British history he could find and flipped to the 16th century.

Sure enough, there was Mary I, wearing the exact same ring.

It was clear to Merlin that it was some kind of conduit. There was no way such a relic could have been passed down and not taken, catalogued and put on display in a museum somewhere without some sleight of hand, which meant that M. LeFay was channelling magic. That also meant she had access to the magic that was slipping away from Merlin, which in turn meant that either she didn't use it and kept the ring as a memento or she had access to even more magic. Somehow.

If Merlin was right, it was a dangerous thing she was doing—very dangerous. Balance was the key to magic. It was the key to energy. Merlin didn't know much about the science of it all, but he knew that what made life on earth possible was balance. Humans were reckless with electromagnetic energy as it was. For one person to try to disturb the balance of all the magical energy in the world? It was going to lead to a catastrophe.

Morgana had only ever been interested in using her magic to take over Camelot. Whoever this woman was, she was obviously not interested in the consequences of what she was doing.

Merlin knew he was onto something. He was pacing back and forth when he caught Arthur's helpless face out of the corner of his eye. Arthur was worried. He was worried about his return, about Merlin's safety, about the possibility that it could all be taken away from him again. Arthur didn't do scared well. Merlin knew he needed to make Arthur feel like he was doing something.

“How about we go over to Gwaine and Percival’s? It'll be easier if I can just tell you all at once.”

“You think maybe you could put some trousers on first?”

Merlin looked down at his still nude body. “That's a good point. We'd better give them some warning before we go over.”

So Merlin talked Arthur through sending a text message from his phone. The time it took for Arthur to send the message and for Gwaine to reply to it would have made a fourteen-year-old weep, but it did give Gwaine and Percival enough time to finish up whatever it was they were doing.

When Percival answered the door freshly showered with damp hair and a wink, Merlin shook his head. Didn't they ever get tired?

“I think I'm onto something,” Merlin announced.

“I'm famished,” Gwaine said, ambling out of the bathroom with a towel slung low around his hips. “Think we could get supper before you go through another long-winded magic lesson.”

Merlin shot Gwaine a glare that he simply smiled at.

“Now that you mention it, I could eat as well,” Arthur said.

“I can always eat,” Percival said with a shrug.

“Oh, fine. There's a place down the block that does pasta I think you'd all like. I can get take away.”

“Who would you be taking it away from?” Percival asked.

“Er, the restaurant?”

“You won't pay for it?” Arthur asked accusingly.

“Oh!” Merlin realised his gaff. “It's just an expression for food that they wrap up for you to take with you instead of eating in the restaurant. I'll prove it to you. Give me your computer.”

After promising that he wouldn't mess with any of Gwaine's porn tabs, Merlin found the cafe's website and pulled up the menu. After a solid ten minutes of explaining the difference between fettuccine and rigatoni, Merlin asked them to trust him, and he called in the order.

He waited for a few minutes while Gwaine took over the computer and was googling every pasta shape known to man, then he left to pick up the food and because he needed a few minutes to himself. For centuries he missed the buzz of the castle around him, but after a millennium or so, he had gotten rather used to having the anonymous quiet of solitude.

The pasta was a success. They were stuffing their faces with more food than strictly necessary, even for four grown men, when Merlin decided to bring up the issue at hand again.

“So, I'm fairly certain that I've narrowed down the culprit to M. LeFay, and I'm pretty sure she wears a ring that is filled with magical energy. What I don't know is where she's getting this magic, or what her motive is. We need to run some intel, and that's where you all come in.”

The now very familiar three blank stares looked back at him.

“What I mean is that we need to scout the situation so we know what we're getting into.”

“A scouting mission! Excellent idea, Merlin,” Arthur said with relief.

Gwaine and Percival nodded in agreement.

“How do we scout in the twenty-first century?”

“Is there a looking glass app?”

“What's an app?”

Merlin pinched the bridge of his nose.

“We just go, find a location we can see the building from and then act casual, which I realize is going to be impossible for all of you, while we watch for LeFay or anything else suspicious.”

“I can be casual,” Arthur said with a huff.

“If you ever want to get away with casual, you need to learn how to slouch. You look like you have a rod up your arse at all times.”

Arthur's mouth dropped.

“He has a point,” Gwaine said.

“Oh, please. All three of you have ridiculous posture, too. You look like you're on horseback at all times,” Merlin snapped.

Percival sniggered behind his hand. Gwaine glared at him.

“Well, we do,” Percival said calmly. “You couldn't wear armour if you slouched.”

“Thank you, Perce.”

“Anything we can do other than have bad posture?” Percival asked.

“Er, just try to act like everyone else. Pretend like you know what's going on. That's what everyone does anyway.”

The next morning, they positioned themselves in a cafe across the street from the building. Gwaine, of course, was doing his damnedest to charm the waitress. She wasn't giving him an inch.

“What do you think?” Gwaine asked Percival after she left.

“She's pretty. Nice bosom.”

Merlin giggled.

“What?”

“No one uses the word 'bosom' anymore.”

“What do they say instead?” Gwaine said.

“Well, they call them breasts, or boobs, tits, jugs, mammaries, knockers, bristols, baps—but most of those are rude. In fact it's generally rude to say anything to a woman about her breasts.”

Merlin felt a kick under the table.

“Hey! What was that for?” he shouted at Arthur as he rubbed his shin.

“While you were talking about bosoms, a giant auto-car pulled up in front of the building.”

Sure enough, a limousine had pulled up in front of the building. Moments later, a woman flanked by men in suits came out of the building and got into the car.

“That must be her.”

“She kind of looks like Morgana, with that dreadful smirk,” Arthur said.

The woman did look an awful lot like Morgana, but it was impossible for it to be _her_. Merlin was sure of very few things, but that one he knew. The old religion could be toyed with, pushed, and energy could transfer through magical vessels, but what was left of Morgana was too corrupt to be preserved in one vessel. “It's not really her, I promise. It's just some of her life force that's been passed down over the centuries.”

“How is that possible?”

“Well, it's sort of like a Horcrux actually.”

“A what?”

Merlin added Harry Potter on the list of ever-growing pop culture references he needed to explain. He never thought he was that cool until he started hanging around three men from the Middle Ages.

“She was able to extract some of her power and transfer it to other people, probably into objects as well. That is _definitely_ dark magic.”

“We have to kill her,” Gwaine said matter-of-factly.

“We don't even know if it's her yet!”

“Oh, it's her. I feel the same bad feeling in my gut that I did whenever I was around Morgana in the end. Like my teeth are going to start to sprout hair,” Arthur said.

“I wish I didn't know exactly what you meant,” Gwaine muttered.

“I think I know what you mean, too,” Percival added.

“Well, there you go,” Arthur said. “The consensus is she's evil.”

“I'm not doing anything until I know for sure,” Merlin insisted. “This isn't Camelot. The world is a lot different now. We have a justice system, due process, burden of proof, solicitors.”

Merlin raised his hand to cut off the questions. “What I mean is that we don't have a king who can just decide whether or not someone lives or dies, even if they have done wrong. People get punished for committing murder, even if the person they murdered was evil. If we were actually going to kill her, we'd have to be very sure it was worth it, and very sure we could cover it up somehow so no one could find out.”

Arthur sniffed. “Well that's just ridiculous. Why do they make everything so complicated in this stupid century?”

Merlin didn't have an answer for that. His heart sank a little as he wondered if Arthur could ever get used to the present.

“It wouldn't matter anyway, though, would it?” Percival interrupted Merlin's thoughts. “I mean, if her magic can keep coming back, then she'll never really be dead. Unless you have a spell that keeps someone's magic all the way dead?”

Merlin's eye went wide before he groaned. “Shite. It's Excalibur.”

“My sword?” Arthur asked.

“Excalibur is the only weapon that can kill a magical creature all the way,” Merlin said as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

“And Arthur is the only one who can use it!” Gwaine chimed in.

“That actually makes sense,” Arthur said thoughtfully. “Where is it then?”

“Well...”

“Wait a minute, you lost it?” Arthur shouted.

“No, I didn't _lose_ it. I really haven't just been sitting here in Albion around waiting for your return. I've been needed. There were times when I had to leave England for years and years at a time. I've gotten raided more times than I care to count. Some of my most valuable books were burned. My favourite cauldron was looted.”

Arthur was giving Merlin his stern face, and Merlin knew that there was going to be a conversation later that would involve a lot of hand-waving on his part.

“So someone stole Excalibur?” Gwaine asked.

“I thought it was buried in a stone,” Percival said.

“I thought it was at the bottom of a lake,” Arthur added.

“They drained the lake to build a golf course so I had to move the stone.”

“What’s a golf?”

“It’s another sport,” Merlin said. “Using clubs to hit a little ball into a hole that’s a long way away. Stop laughing, Gwaine.”

“How did you move the stone?” Arthur demanded.

“Kilgharrah,” Merlin said reluctantly. “Unfortunately.”

“I don't know what your history is with K, but I bet if Percival and I asked, he'd help us,” Gwaine said.

“Why is the dragon not on speaking terms with you anyway?” Arthur asked.

Merlin sighed. “I'm the last Dragonlord, and he, well, he doesn't like it.”

It took few seconds for it to sink in, but then realisation dawned on Arthur's face. “That last Dragonlord?” Arthur exploded. “So that man? He was your father?”

Merlin nodded.

“Are there any _more_ secrets you're keeping from me? I supposed you can fly and shoot fire out of your fingertips, too. Or turn yourself invisible. Maybe you're actually heir to the throne and you've only brought me back so you can kill me yourself.”

“Are you quite finished with your tantrum?”

Arthur sat down and crossed his arms over his chest in a full-on royal pout, but he didn't say a word. The rest of the conversation was stilted. Merlin didn't want to talk about Kilgharrah or to Kilgharrah, in spite of Gwaine's insistence and Percival's reassurance that the dragon had been very polite and generous to them. Eventually he had to promise that he'd think about it, but only if he couldn't come up with another solution.

“And only if we have a fool-proof plan!” he added. “You lot have me talking about committing murder like it's an easy thing to do.”

When they got back to Merlin's flat after dropping off Percival and Gwaine, Arthur still wasn't speaking directly to Merlin.

“Look, Arthur. I'm sorry I kept you in the dark about the Dragonlord thing. It was just too dangerous. Not because I didn't want you to know, but you knowing about it would have put you at risk, too.”

Arthur's back was to Merlin, his arms crossed over his chest as he stared out Merlin's window.

“I knew about your magic, Merlin,” he responded.

Merlin gaped, thinking he surely misheard. “What?!”

“I knew about it years before you told me.”

“But how did you—why didn't you—you knew?”

“You really are a terrible liar, Merlin. I kept waiting and waiting for you to tell me, and you did there, at least in the end.”

Merlin blinked. Arthur had known? He had known for _years_ and never said anything. He didn't know whether to be livid or grateful for keeping his secret.

“I know why you didn't tell me,” Arthur said quietly. “At least I think I do. It's what I would have done in your place. You were protecting me. Had I known and it had gotten out, well, there's no sense in wondering about it now. But I wish you wouldn't feel like you had to keep things from me now. Especially now.”

Merlin crossed the room and forced himself into Arthur's space until he could see into his eyes. “You really knew?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn't care?”

“Merlin, you were—I always—I loved—no, no I didn't care.”

“Oh, Arthur...”

If their first kiss had been a spark, and their first kiss after Arthur's return a flame, then this one was a conflagration.

Merlin had given himself over to Arthur time and again, but he never let himself _feel_ vulnerable. He always had a guard up. Not just their relationship, but their lives had been hurried, sneaking in moments where they could. Between the battles and duties and the rules and decorum, Merlin had always protected himself, not just from letting his magic be known, but from falling too hard for Arthur. It was another part of himself he kept hidden.

But he didn't have to hide it any longer.

With this realisation, Merlin drew back and then threw himself against Arthur's solid body hard enough to throw Arthur off balance. They tumbled backward onto Merlin's bed.

“Merlin,” Arthur gasped.

Merlin didn't have the words to respond, so he tried to explain with another devouring kiss. Arthur seemed to understand, and his hands came up to clutch at Merlin, grabbing at any inch of bare skin he could uncover.

What started out as frantic became sensuous, the more points of contact their bodies shared. They seemed to decide at the same time that there were too many clothes between them. They sprang apart and rushed through the task of undressing. Merlin returned to his place on top of Arthur and braced his hands on either side of Arthur's face. He looked down into Arthur's blue eyes, which seemed brighter and more open to him than he could ever remember. It was as if the walls had finally all crumbled and the veils lifted, and they were truly seeing each other for the first time.

Merlin fell in love all over again.

He kissed Arthur slowly and soundly. Arthur wrapped his arms around Merlin and pulled their bodies even closer, like he was trying to press Merlin into his body, moulding them together. They made love like that, barely a breath of space between them, Arthur thrusting slowly but soundly, murmuring to Merlin the things he would never say out loud.

Even without a hand on him, the slippery slide of their bodies was enough for Merlin reach his climax, Arthur tumbling after him.

As Merlin came with a cry, the room burst into light. Every lamp turned on and shined unnaturally bright, and the room itself seemed bathed in a luminescent glow.

“Merlin, what just happened?” Arthur asked as he blinked in confusion looking at Merlin with wonder.

“Sometimes my magic comes back when I feel something very strongly.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. Oh.”

Merlin leaned down and kissed Arthur softly one more time before rolling over onto his back.

They lay next to each other, the room silent except for their heavy breathing. Merlin stretched out, putting his arms under his head, utterly content. Arthur seemed to take that as a cue to move, but instead of stretching out as he normally did, he curled himself around Merlin's body in a rare gesture of pure affection. Merlin brought a hand down to card through Arthur's hair.

“The headaches you're getting,” Arthur said quietly. “That's related to your magic, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

“Your, your immortality--”

“I'm not immortal, Arthur. My body is just as fragile as yours.”

“What I mean is, the reason why you've been able to exist this long is because of your magic.”

“Yes.” Merlin knew exactly where Arthur was going, but there was no use in hiding the gravity of the situation from him.

“So if somehow all the magic in the world were taken...”

“The whole world would be in trouble, Arthur, but yes. I imagine I'd be one of the first things to go.”

Merlin didn't fail to hear Arthur's breath catch in his throat. He clutched Merlin tighter. “I'm not going to let that happen.”

* * * * *

Merlin and Arthur met Gwaine and Percival for breakfast the next morning. They were all adapting well enough that Merlin felt comfortable taking them out to a restaurant where they could get a proper full English.

Though the food didn't always agree with him, the sheer variety still made Arthur's eyes widen with wonder. For Percival and Gwaine, a meal was a meal. They'd spent enough nights in their life going to sleep with an empty stomach that food was never a source of pleasure. But growing up in the castle, Arthur had always been surrounded by what passed for delicacies. The options he had in the 21st century mystified him.

But of all the things he could possibly dislike, it scandalised Merlin that Arthur didn't like tea.

The first time Arthur refused it, Merlin was stunned into silence for so long that Arthur was genuinely worried.

“But it's _tea_.”

“Yes, you told me. Am I missing something?”

“There are few things more stereotypically British than tea.”

“Yes, well, I'm not _really_ British, am I?”

"Well--”

“Neither are you for that matter.”

“But when in Rome...”

Arthur's jaw dropped. “I finally almost get one of your silly references.”

Merlin made Arthur try it again, white and black, with sugar and without, to no avail. When Arthur ordered coffee at breakfast, Merlin frowned.

“You're still on this?” Arthur asked.

“I don't understand how you like coffee but not tea.”

Gwaine and Percival exchanged a confused look.

“It's a touchy subject,” Merlin said.

Arthur cleared his throat. “More importantly, Merlin's been getting headaches that are tied to all of this. If we don't do something about it, he’s going to end up a martyr for the cause like the rest of us. I don't think we should wait. I'm sure this M. LeFay is the culprit. It seems pretty obvious to me that we just need to stop her in whatever way we can.”

Merlin could hear the desperation in Arthur's voice. He hadn't let himself think too much about the ultimate consequence of having a world without magic. In his darker moments, he considered that the consequence of his spell on Arthur would be that Arthur would return at the moment of his death.

He had to fight that thought, and for that reason alone, he found himself agreeing to at least confront this M. LeFay.

“We can't just go walking into corporate headquarters, stab the CEO, and then walk away with no consequences. We'll have to draw her out. We think she's behind all of this, but I still don't know how she's doing it.”

“But killing her won't end it. There's more to it than just the ring she wears. You can't destroy magic, so she must be blocking it in some way. I just don't know what it is.”

“We'll figure it out,” Percival said, for both Merlin and Arthur's benefit.

“Yeah,” Gwaine added. “We've got our backs, er, your back? How did that go?”

* * * * *

Merlin didn't know if it was a good idea to send Arthur and Gwaine out on their own to run surveillance, but they both insisted, and Merlin could use their help. He still wanted incriminating evidence that M. LeFay was tampering with the world's magic.

It left Merlin alone with Percival for the first time since the knight's return.

“Thank you, Merlin, for not saying anything to Gwaine and Arthur.”

“Gwaine wouldn't think any different of you if he knew the truth, you know.”

“No, but he'd think different of himself.”

“What do you mean?”

“Those last years I was so reckless. No, I was beyond reckless. It wasn’t knightly behaviour—treating everything like a suicide mission. Well, you saw me. You know.”

“But Gwaine--”

“Would be better off not knowing how devastating it was for me to lose him,” Percival finished.

Merlin nodded, although he didn’t agree. He knew Percival valued the knight’s code and could see how Percival wrestled with the thought that his actions betrayed his vow to be upstanding and exemplary. But Merlin also saw the possessive way Gwaine looked at Percival when he thought no one was paying attention. He knew had Gwaine been the one to survive Percival, Gwaine would have been just as destroyed.

“Your secret is safe with me,” Merlin assured.

“I really appreciate it.”

“Say, are you okay here? Gwaine seems to be getting on fine, and Arthur is determined to get on whether he's okay or not.”

“I've always been adaptable—my family, Lancelot. That's why what happened after Gwaine was—well, anyway, I'll be fine. You don't have to worry about me. This era is--it's interesting.”

Merlin laughed at Percival's unfailing diplomacy.

"Though there's still so much I don't understand,” Percival continued. “I've had people ask me how much I lift. What does that mean? How much of what?”

“Well, to stay in shape, er, to keep their bodies looking strong, some people lift metal weights to build muscle.”

Percival blinked.

“I'll have to take you to a gym, or show you pictures.” Merlin got out the computer.

“So they just want to look strong?”

“Well, most people don't have very physically demanding jobs anymore.”

“But they want to look like they do? That doesn't make sense.”

“They do it for their health too, but, it is a superficial world you've returned to.”

“Super-fish-al?”

“Ah, fake. People are very concerned with how things look.”

“So when those women giggled at me and told me I was fit in the, what did you call it, the park?”

“Park, yeah. They we're complimenting your appearance, well, specifically your, uh, body.”

“Oh.” Percival blushed.

“You're quite good looking by twenty-first century standards.”

It was at that moment Gwaine and Arthur burst into the flat. Gwaine, obviously having heard Merlin, grinned and bounded over to Percival, where he planted a sloppy kiss on Percival's cheek.

“He's quite good-looking by any century’s standards.”

“I take it back,” Percival said, smiling fondly at Gwaine. “People haven't really changed all that much.”

Merlin laughed.

“I'm getting the feeling that a joke was just made at my expense,” Gwaine said.

“You'd think you'd be used to it by now,” Arthur piped in.

Gwaine punched Arthur in the arm.

“So what'd you find out?” Merlin asked, before the roughhousing started.

“Well I chatted up her servant,” Gwaine started.

“Secretary,” Merlin corrected.

“Actually, they prefer to be called 'administrative assistants',” Arthur said.

All three men turned to look at Arthur.

“I saw it on the telly!”

“Fine, her administers assistant,” Gwaine said.

Merlin didn't bother to correct him.

“The only thing I found out is that she works all the time, expects her servants to work all the time, is attached to her mobile thingy, and she spends a lot of money collecting old junk.”

“Old junk?”

“That's what she said. She said that M. LeFay was always bidding on old rocks and carvings that weren't even pretty. She apparently has a big collection that is housed in some undisclosed location.”

Merlin went pale.

“Are you all right?” Percival asked.

“Yes, yes, fine,” Merlin said. “I have a horrible suspicion that she was behind the last raid that happened to me. The thieving bastards took the last of my dried Mortaeus flowers! They've been extinct now for a century. I'm not even sure if they've retained any of their potency.”

“Just how often _have_ you been raided?”

Merlin waved away the question. “Not important. I have security cameras now. Anyway, from my research, I know that M. LeFay is from a very wealthy family, so I'm guessing she didn't just start this 'collection' since her 'promotion'.”

“What's that thing you just did?” Gwaine asked.

"What?”

 

“With your hand, I've seen other people do it too.”

It was time for Merlin to look confused until Gwaine mimicked the motion of making air quotes, well, almost.

“Oh, er, it's a way to show that you don't actually intend the word to mean what it's supposed to mean. I think she had some help getting her so-called promotion. Her rise to power within the company was totally unheard of because it happened so quickly.”

“So you think she must be using magic somehow to do that too?” Gwaine mused.

“Unless her assistant said something about her sleeping her way to the top.”

Gwaine shook his head. “Apparently, M. LeFay 'has no life'.”

“But if she's been using magic this whole time, how did you not detect it? I thought you had a registry of magical things?” Arthur insisted.

“There are objects that can block magic from being detected, and she seems to have her hands on some of the oldest relics known to me. I imagine she has some that have been passed down that I don't know about. I think the ring she wears—but it couldn't be.”

Merlin squinted at the picture of M. LeFay that was sitting on the table in a pile with the rest of his research. And that's when it clicked. “It looks like a smaller version of the amulet of first magic.”

“What's the amulet of first magic?”

“I thought it was only legend. Something that warlock parents made up to explain to their kids how magic came into being.”

“Is that what it did? I thought you said magic was just in all things naturally.”

“Well, I guess something could have put it there. I always thought it was just a legend. Like a creation myth. All religions have them.”

“So if it is a real thing, what does it do?”

“I don't know exactly.”

“You know what it is but you don't know what it does?”

“I didn't even think it was _real_ , Arthur.”

“I'm just trying to understand, _Merlin_ ,” Arthur snapped back.

The tension was broken with a burst of laughter from Percival.

“What?” Arthur and Merlin asked simultaneously.

“The two of you. Some things just never change.”

“What do you mean?” Arthur asked.

“You mean you never noticed that you are constantly flirting?” Gwaine asked. “You have since the day I met you.”

Arthur huffed, and Merlin crossed his arms defensively and cleared his throat.

"Anyway, what I do know of this amulet, if there's even some truth to the myths, is that it was the original source of all magic on Earth. I suppose there's no reason why it couldn't contain all the magic in the world again.”

“Call me crazy, but this sounds kind of terrifying— _all_ the magic in the world? Why don't you seem more alarmed by this?” Gwaine asked.

“Oh, well, it's not like it can be wielded by anyone. It's not a weapon.”

“You could have said that first.”

“No living being can handle that amount of energy—magic-user or not—it would kill them immediately.”

“That's comforting, I guess,” Gwaine said.

“I still feel like I'm missing something,” Arthur said. “Unless there's a way to get the magic in and out of the stone, then what's the point?”

“She must have it attached to some kind of conduit that let the magic go back into it but not out,” Merlin mused.

“But why is she doing this if she can't use the magic in the amulet?”

“I don't really know. I think she just wants to take away magic so no one else can use it either. I guess she thinks if you take away the magic, then people will have to rely even more on electricity.”

“Is that true?”

“Maybe a little. But she's forgetting that magic isn't just a tool to harness. It helps keep everything on the planet in balance. I don't know how the amulet of first magic got here, but I'm pretty sure life as we know it wouldn't exist without it.”

“Shouldn't she know this?”

“It only confirms what I thought. I don't think she's a true magic-user. I think she just has some tools that let her use it temporarily. She might be using some kind of compulsion to get this merger to go through. That ring she wears has some kind of magical power. There's no way she could buy these companies for the price she paid. Maybe she doesn't want anyone to do to her what she did to them.”

“But how do you take away magic?”

“Well, my guess is that you store it the same way you do electricity. She's using it like a capacitor.”

“A capacitor?” all three men asked at the same time.

Merlin had reached the end of his patience. “Just trust me. Do you want another lesson on how electricity works or do you want to stop her?”

“And how do you propose we do that?” Arthur asked haughtily, after being chastised.

“Something that powerful, she can't be keeping it in London. There's no way she could hide it, and it wouldn't work if it was just sitting in some building.”

“The assistant said she had a place in Wales.”

“You could have mentioned that sooner!”

“I sort of forgot what Wales was. You have to admit it's a ridiculous name for a place.”

Merlin looked up at Gwaine. Behind his swagger, he looked scared. Of all the knowledge Merlin had gained over the past millennium, waking up in a different world was not something he could ever really comprehend.

“I'm sorry I--” Merlin started.

“It's okay, Merlin,” Gwaine said softly, his guard fully down for the first time since his return.

Percival reached out and grabbed Gwaine's hand. That gesture offered more comfort than Merlin could ever have mustered.

“If it helps, I think I'm starting to have a plan.”

* * * * *

The first step was to get Excalibur.

They went back to the cave where Gwaine and Percival had woken up out of Merlin's spell. If Merlin had thought having Arthur in the car was annoying, having all three of them in the car almost made him wish he had never cast the spells on them in the first place.

Having all three knights cooped up in Merlin's car was enough to make him want to drive full speed into a tree. Used to riding on horseback and having to stay vigilant, they were all restless and fidgety, and Merlin's car couldn't comfortably hold four grown men.

The radio caused all kinds of problems. Talk radio confused them, and anyway, they didn't know enough about current events to find it entertaining. They didn't care for any of the music they heard—Arthur compared the electric guitar to a horse giving birth, Percival said the cymbals sounded too much like the clashing of swords, and Gwaine mocked the lyrics of every song that came on.

“I don't even know what half these words mean, and I still know this is terrible,” he said, after a particularly poor attempt at rhyme.

When they stopped for petrol and a bite to eat, Merlin looked sympathetically at the exasperated parents having their children running all around them, but eventually they made it.

“Say, how did this land not get built over, the way the rest of this area is?” Arthur asked, as they started the hike back towards the caves.

“Oh, er,” Merlin started to come up with a lie. Then he remembered his promise to not keep things from Arthur. “I own it.”

Arthur's jaw dropped as Percival and Gwaine stopped dead in their tracks. Land ownership wasn't exactly commonplace in their day. “So, you own Camelot?”

“Well, I guess technically, yes.”

Arthur's mouth went into a comical 'o'.

“It's just land now, but I couldn't let anyone develop it. It's my home. I can barely hold onto magic anymore, but I still feel it here,” Merlin's voice cracked. “And anyway, what if you woke up in the middle of a Starbucks?”

Arthur laughed hoarsely, but he reached over to grab Merlin's hand.

The woods were still dense on Merlin's property, so once they started their trek, it was easy to lose their sense of direction. The woods were different from when Arthur, Gwaine, and Percival lived in them, but Gwaine and Percival seemed to have a sense for where they were going, so Merlin let them lead on.

Eventually, they came to a steep hill, and that was where Gwaine stopped.

“Up there,” he pointed to a sharp cut into the hill's face.

“Are you sure this is where you woke up?” Merlin asked.

“Yes.”

“Well then we'd better go up.”

The climb wasn't terrible, but Merlin hadn't exerted himself that much in a long time. Of course, the knights were perfectly fine. Merlin grumbled about them having done nothing but sleep for the last 14 centuries, but they weren't a particularly sympathetic lot.

Once they reached the cave entrance, Merlin walked around slowly, closing his eyes and trying to get a sense of the energy in the rocks, the nearby trees. He could feel the magic thrumming inside the trees and the stones, but it was faint.

“There was strong magic here, but it has dissipated faster than usual. A lot faster.”

“I hate to bring logic and reason into this? But are you just expecting this dragon to materialize?”

“Why don't you just check his Facebook page?” Gwaine asked.

Merlin glared.

“He wouldn't accept my friend request. Plus, I think he mostly uses Facebook to play Farmville.” Merlin raised his hands before any of them could say it. “Don't ask.”

“Does it take magic to summon him or do you just not want to?” Arthur asked.

“Kilgharrah doesn't appreciate being summoned.”

“If I understand it correctly, Kilgharrah won't be around to be summoned if you don't,” Arthur said quietly.

“Well then you explain that to him,” Merlin muttered.

Before Arthur could protest again, Merlin sighed and started chanting the spell that would call the great dragon to him. He wasn't sure if his magic would even work to start the call. Before he could get through the first three words, though, a huge gust of wind kicked up, forcing the four men to drop down to the ground, covering their heads, and shielding themselves from the debris that started to swirl around them.

“No need to tax yourself, sorcerer,” Kilgharrah said as haughtily as a dragon could muster. He made a show of settling his wings as he landed, before lowering his head to eye level with the men.

Merlin rolled his eyes. “We can play this game or you could just help us. You obviously know what's going on.”

“Yes, sorcerer,” Kilgharrah said, with that uncanny way he had of making 'sorcerer' sound like an insult. “I am aware of the witch's doing.”

“Well then you know we have to stop it.”

“Why do you think I'm here?” Kilgharrah snapped. “I warned you about this, you know, but you never listen.”

“Well, _you_ could have told me the amulet of first magic was real.”

“You didn't need to know.”

“Didn't need to know?” Merlin exploded. “Didn't need to know that there was something on this planet that could take all the magic in the world back?”

“Well, we appreciate your help, K,” Gwaine butted in, glaring at Merlin.

The dragon smiled. “Your accommodations are suiting you then?”

“They're far nicer than we deserve,” Percival said. “You were right about the king size bed, though.”

“Are we going to stand around and catch up or are we going to get my sword?” Arthur stepped forward, finally having enough.

“Ah, Arthur Pendragon,” Kilgharrah said, leaning forward to take a look at Arthur.

If Arthur was startled at all by a talking dragon, he didn't show it. But the grin Kilgharrah gave Arthur was positively predatory.

“You know, sorcerer,” the dragon tossed his head in Merlin's direction but kept his eyes on Arthur. “If you had listened to me in the first place, it might have saved your boyfriend's life here.”

Arthur mouthed the word 'boyfriend' questioningly at Merlin. Merlin tried to respond with a look that said, ‘I'll explain later but don't worry your manhood is not being called into question’.

“I've given up talking to this one. Perhaps you will heed my warning, Arthur Pendragon.” Having not been address with respect since his return, Arthur straightened; even in a t-shirt, jeans, and trainers, he looked every bit like the king of legend. “Only you are to wield Excalibur. Grave mistakes will befall he who disobeys.”

Arthur bowed his head. “Thank you, Great Dragon. It has been duly noted.”

Kilgharrah seemed pleased with Arthur's demeanour.

“Very well, wait here.”

And with that, the dragon was beating his wings and shooting up again into the sky creating enough wind to knock Merlin over.

“He did that on purpose,” Merlin huffed.

Gwaine was trying not to laugh, but Percival came over to extend a hand and help Merlin up.

“I understand why the dragon might not like me, but what did you do to him, Merlin?” Arthur asked.

“We have a history,” Merlin said drily, leaving out that most of it involved him.

It was only a few moments later when Gwaine spotted Kilgharrah coming back to them, this time scaling down the rocks from above where they stood.

“It's been here all along?”

“Well, I had to hide it in a few magical traps, but on my land, it was rather safe. We just put it in the caves as a precaution.”

When the dragon reached them, he dropped a large boulder to the ground with a heavy thud. Sure enough, stabbed right through the centre of the rock was Excalibur, shiny as the day it was forged in Kilgharrah's very breath.

Arthur inhaled sharply.

“It's...”

“It's yours, Arthur,” Merlin said.

Arthur approached the boulder tentatively. Gwaine and Percival were, like Merlin, frozen in place. It was utterly out of place, to see a king wielding a sword in the 21st century, but for those few moments they were all back in Camelot. Arthur was king, Merlin was his manservant, and Gwaine and Percival his trusted knights.

Arthur's grip on the sword was assured, firm, and with one quick movement, the sword was released from its encasement and shimmering in the sunlight.

Merlin was surprised to feel the tears in his eyes. Arthur brought his arm down and inspected the sword, taking a few practice thrusts.

“I wish I'd thought to bring mine so we could spar,” Gwaine said jokingly, though Merlin could see he was aching for the familiarity.

“Thank you, Kilgharrah.” Merlin tried to sound sincere. “You've helped us immensely.”

The dragon sat back on his haunches and picked at his claw.

“You mean you don't want my help for the other bit?”

“What other bit?”

“I assume you plan to recapture the amulet. Killing this LeFay woman might break the cycle of Morgana's cursed rebirth, but it won't end the magic drain.”

“Well, we have a general idea where the amulet is...” Merlin trailed off.

“It's in a transformer at one of her company's substations,” the dragon drawled. “Conveniently, the one nearest where we are right now.”

“Transformer?” Gwaine asked.

“I just saw that word somewhere,” Percival said.

“Me too! It was on the tube train,” Arthur added.

“Why would you see anything about a transformer on the Tube?” Merlin asked.

“It was with a picture. There were men on it. I can't remember what else it said,” Gwaine said.

“Oh!” It finally dawned on Merlin what they were going on about. “You mean _Transformers,_ the film.”

“It's a film?”

“Different kind of transformer.”

Merlin could have sworn Kilgharrah's lips curled up in a smile.

“Why on earth does she have it a substation?” Merlin wondered. Generally people stayed away from them, but surely she wasn't—Merlin gasped.

“But how?”

“Think, sorcerer,” Kilgharrah said. “An energy company that controls all the power grids in the country, an amulet that can hold all the magical power in the world.”

“But you can't just stick an amulet into a transformer.”

“Have you never heard of solder?”

Merlin blinked.

“She soldered the amulet of first magic into a circuit at one of her company’s substations.”

“Earth metals are excellent conduits of magic.”

Merlin smacked his hand to his forehead.

“Believe me,” Kilgharrah said. “I know exactly how you feel.”

Merlin had so many replies that he couldn't decide which one to go with first, but Gwaine stepped in and spoke instead. It was probably for the best, all things considered.

“So will you help us?”

“As if you have a chance of succeeding if I don't.”

* * * * *

The next part of the plan involved drawing out M. LeFay.

“I could ask her out on a date,” Gwaine suggested. “She looks kinky enough to go for a threesome, don't you think?”

“Is that what you do when you pick up women?” Arthur shot a scandalised look at Percival.

“Perce's massive cock has kept both of us deep in the fairer sex for years.”

“You go along with this?” Merlin was only scandalised for Percival's sake.

Percival smirked at Gwaine. “Just because I prefer men doesn't mean I don't like women, too. Gwaine gets way too jealous when I bring in another bloke.”

Gwaine's face bloomed an uncharacteristic shade of red.

“See. He's not even protesting it.”

“Fine. I don't like seeing you with other men. You're mine,” Gwaine sniffed.

Merlin tried to steer the conversation back to the topic at hand. “As much as I appreciate the offer, I think it's probably best if I reach out to her.”

Merlin slapped his hand over Arthur's mouth before he could get his protest out.

“I'm not going to flirt with her, Arthur. If she's this familiar with magic, she obviously knows who I am.”

“Well, let's go to her office then. Demand to see her.”

“I think maybe it would be best to ring her office, or maybe email.”

“By 'ring' you mean that silly mobile device, but how on earth do you email? It sounds unpleasant,” Arthur insisted.

“Er, email is short for electronic mail. Oh, you don't know about the royal post—not that kind of post. It's just a way to use the computer to send a written message to someone.”

“Like the Book of Faces.”

“Well, sort of. It's something only they can read.”

“But you can do that on Facebook,” Gwaine broke in. “K said there's a way to 'chat' through it. He told us it was a great way to meet women. We really need to sign up for this, Perce.”

“I think the type of women you're looking for would be on Tinder,” Merlin muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing! So, Facebook?”

So that's how Merlin ended up sending a friend request to M. LeFay, which she quickly accepted only a few minutes later.

“How does the head of a major energy conglomerate have time to be on Facebook?” Merlin wondered out loud.

“You said she used magic to get her job, maybe she uses magic to run it,” Arthur suggested.

“That's not outside the realm of possibility,” Merlin said. “Now we need to send her a message. I'm not sure how we want to phrase this.”

“We know what you're doing, you hideous trollop?” Arthur suggested.

“The point is to lure her away from London, not insult her. And where on earth did you learn the word 'trollop'?”

Arthur shrugged. “Did I use it right?”

“Remarkably, yes.”

Merlin had already figured that they best way to get her to draw her away from London and her minions was to bait her with something she couldn't refuse. Since she was magic obsessed, Excalibur was the best bait they could find. Arthur wasn't too happy about it. Merlin thought he was going to sleep with the sword under his pillow.

In the end, Merlin went with: _I understand you're a collector of something that interests us both. I have something you might be interested in._

She replied not five minutes later: _I wondered when I'd hear from you, Merlin. It would have to be a very particular something for me to be interested. I'm a busy woman and I don't like having my time wasted._

“Arthur, what did you do with my mobile?”

“Nothing! You won't show me how to get into it so I can play Zombies and Plants.”

Merlin jumped up to look for his phone, which he found in the refrigerator of all places. Merlin didn't even want to know. He flipped through his pictures until he found one he had taken of Excalibur. Then he cropped it so only a portion of the hilt and a hint of the blade showed.

“You think that's enough for her to recognize it?”

“I don't want to give away too much,” Merlin replied. “And yes, it's the most fabled sword in history, and she's no slouch. I'm sure she'll know what to look for.”

He sent her the picture.

 _I'm impressed. You've piqued my interest,_ she responded.

_Meet me in Camelot, then. This Saturday._

“Are you sure about this?”

“I feel more in tune with the magic there,” Merlin said. “Even if she's draining it, there is so much natural magic there, I wouldn't be totally unarmed.”

“But will she agree to it?”

Arthur's questions were partly answered with her next reply: _That's an awful long was to go._

_I'll drop the price to take care of your travel expenses._

_Fine_ , came her terse response.

 _Great! I'll see you then!_ Merlin laid it on a little.

 _And do bring Arthur._ And then her green “message me” light went dark.

Merlin paled at the words of her last message.

“She knows about you.”

“How could she know about me?”

“You think her assistant said anything to her about talking to you and Gwaine?”

“We didn't tell her our names,” Gwaine said. “I think she thought we were those people with the black sticks that people talk into.”

“Reporters?”

"Sure?” Gwaine said.

“Well, that means she might not know about you. Or at least not Percival. This is good, maybe you can at least fly under her radar and she won't think to have you on any security watch lists.”

“Well, we are going to be flying in on a dragon. That might get some notice.”

Merlin shook his head and sighed.

* * * * *

They had gone over and over the plan, but when Saturday rolled around, Merlin was still nervous.

“Do you two know what to do?”

“Yes, Merlin. Stop worrying. We make sure no one is around. K breathes some fire on the stone, We grab it. You kill the witch. Piece of pie.”

“Cake,” Merlin corrected.

“That too.”

“And K will be there to protect us in case something goes wrong,” Percival added.

“That's what I'm worried about,” Merlin muttered.

Merlin was bundle of nerves as they returned to Camelot that morning. They were meeting Morgana at dusk—her suggestion—but Merlin wanted to get there earlier. Arthur gave him space as he sat by the lake. He could feel the magic still there, but it felt hurt, injured, like it was fighting to stand but couldn't hold up its own weight.

Merlin didn't want to live in a world without magic. And he wasn’t even sure he could.

When it got closer to the appointed meeting time, Merlin and Arthur got into position. Merlin knew where she would drive in, so he sat on an overturned log, casually reading a newspaper.

In a stroke of luck, she showed up alone.

“Merlin,” she said as she leaned on her sports car with her arms crossed, obviously waiting for him to breach the space and come to her.

Merlin didn't budge.

“LeFay,” he said coldly.

“Let's cut the chit chat, shall we? You have something I want.”

“What do you want with Excalibur anyway? You know it only responds to one person.”

“Well maybe I'm going to take him, too. You promised you'd bring him.”

“He's with the sword.”

“And you expect me to believe you?”

Merlin took his mobile out of his pocket and extended it to her.

“Check the photos.”

Merlin had taken a series of photographs of Arthur with Excalibur a half hour before on the other side of the lake. There were time stamps on all of them. Merlin didn't know of any way they could be doctored, other than through some kind of mind-controlling spell, but M. LeFay probably knew Merlin's magic was too weak.

She seemed satisfied with the pictures, looking at them to check the terrain.

“He's on the other side of the lake. I wasn't going to take any chances.”

“I assume you have some kind of conveyance for us.”

“You mean you don't have enough magic in that ring to fly us across?” Merlin asked.

“So you do know about my ring then,” M. LeFay mused.

“You learn a few things over the years,” Merlin said casually, trying to cover the surge of magic that came to life in his body. “What I don't know is why you're doing this.”

M. LeFay laughed. “You're so precious, Merlin. It hasn't once occurred to you in a millennium that with your magic you could be most powerful man in the world?”

“But you aren't using magic. You're just draining the Earth of its magic and making everything slightly more reliant on your power companies. Magic does so much more than that. You have no idea what you are dealing with.”

“So you do get it! Your innocence is so terribly amusing, so I'll spell it out for you. Money, Merlin. Money is power. Not magic. Magic means nothing in this world. Money is the only thing that talks.”

“You're rich already. You're a trust fund baby! Why do you want more?”

“Because it's _more_. It's more than you could even fathom. It's more than my father ever earned.”

“Daddy issues,” Merlin muttered. “The plot always comes down to daddy issues.”

“What was that?”

“He said you should have spent less time counting your money and more time listening to dragons,” Arthur said from behind M. LeFay.

He didn't give her time to respond. Merlin saw the red appear, blooming across her chest before he saw Excalibur pierce through her and her body crumpled to the ground.

Merlin was expecting something more dramatic, a black spirit to come flying out of her body like a wisp or for the earth to tremble in appreciation. But at the end of the day, she wasn't Morgana; she was just a woman who got tied up in Morgana's magic and let power get to her head.

Arthur seemed a little disappointed. He looked down at the body at his feet curiously, as if he expected it to leap back up. He had barely pulled the sword out of M. LeFay's body before the beating of wings startled Merlin. For a Dragonlord, he had a horrible sense of when dragons were actually around him.

Kilgharrah landed very softly, and Gwaine and Percival slid off of the dragon's back. Merlin and Arthur both gaped at them, for different reasons entirely. Merlin could tell Arthur was thinking about asking for a ride.

“You have it?” Merlin asked, though he already had a partial answer.

“Ye of little faith, Merlin,” Gwaine boasted.

Percival pulled the amulet out of his pocket.

“Once it was disconnected we just grabbed it and took off. It went just as Kilgharrah said.”

“Do you feel more magical?” Gwaine asked.

Merlin nodded. “I felt it as soon as it happened. She really was close to Camelot, wasn't she?”

Arthur was inspecting the amulet in Percival's outstretched hand, clearly too afraid to touch it, but not wanting to make it seem so.

“What are we going to do with it?” he asked.

“Well, I was thinking about encasing it in stone the same way Excalibur is and then sinking it in the lake.”

“Do you trust men to abide by the rules of property, sorcerer?” Kilgharrah broke in. “This land may not always belong to you, no matter what the deed on the paper says.”

He was right, of course, but Merlin didn't want to admit that. “What do you suggest?”

The dragon didn't say a word, instead reaching out a front claw in front of Percival. Percival looked a Merlin before dropping the amulet into Kilgharrah's palm. The amulet looked tiny and utterly insignificant in contrast to the beast, who seemed to be studying the stone intently.

Kilgharrah sat back on his haunches, tossing it in the air and catching it a few times, then he winked at Merlin and threw it even higher. Instead of catching in his palm again, he tossed it right into his mouth.

“You swallowed it?” Merlin shrieked. “You just ate the source of all magic!”

“My body cannot digest it. It will be perfectly safe there. Unless you were planning on gutting me in my sleep.”

“No, of course not, I--” Merlin paused. He couldn't find any reason why it wouldn't be safe in the great dragon's stomach. “It won't give you any indigestion, I hope?”

“I've had worse. Did you know they deep fry chocolate bars?”

* * * * *

They made her death look like a satanic ritual. It took a lot of staging, which was made a lot easier with Merlin's magic at full capacity again. Her warehouse full of magical artefacts also helped. Merlin managed to snag a couple of the more dangerous ones to study, but they left most of them behind to make the case more damning.

“This was so much easier in our time. You kill the queen, you take the throne. Covering up a murder and stopping an energy company merger is ridiculous,” Arthur grumbled as they made their way back to London.

“The 21st century is ridiculous,” Merlin agreed.

“You sure this will work, Merlin?” Gwaine asked. “I don't want princess here thrown in jail. He'd never make it.”

“Assuming Kilgharrah had one of his weird dragon minions delete our Facebook exchange, we should be fine. I guess the good thing about my spell is that there's no record of any of us so we're untraceable.”

Once the authorities found M. LeFay's body, after a missing person report was filed by her assistant, Merlin did have to release a statement as the owner of the property—under one of his many pseudonyms, of course. As it turned out, there had been a coven of witches who had tried to perform rituals there in the 1960s, so the story was consistent enough for the police and the public to be satisfied.

Once the dust had settled, Gwaine and Percival went back to their flat to “celebrate,” leaving Merlin and Arthur to go for a stroll along the river.

“There's something I don't understand. I understand that I needed to wield Excalibur to kill new Morgana,” Arthur said. “You said that I was fated to return when my people needed me, but most people don't even know about magic. They don't know that the world is filled with magic or how much it plays a role in their lives.”

“No, they don't. Most people live in blissful ignorance of a lot of things.”

“So my people _didn't_ need me.”

Merlin laughed. “But don't you see, your people _did_ need you. I needed you. Kilgharrah needed you. After all that's happened, Arthur, your people are the magic users.”

“Well that's ironic.”

“Oh, what do you know about irony?”

“I know that rain on one's wedding day is not so much ironic as it is merely a horrible coincidence.”

“That reference is about 20 years too old.”

“For someone who is over 1400 years old, that's not too bad.”

“Arthur?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

* * * * *

_Epilogue_

The merger dissolved afterward. It didn't make the energy industry stop interfering with magic, but the balance was starting to resettle around it. Merlin could perform simple spells again with ease and bigger spells without too much effort.

Arthur, Percival, and Gwaine didn't disappear either, but they did start to adjust. Mostly.

Paper money still confused Arthur to no end. Even after six months, he would still hoard one pound coins. Merlin caught him throwing away notes more than once that had been crumpled in his pocket.

“Arthur! That's money!”

“Well it doesn't bloody look like money!”

And he never said it out loud, but Merlin was sure Arthur was intimidated by, if not afraid of, the computer.

A year after Arthur's return, Merlin took him back to the lake. Well, Arthur took them. He was practising to get his driver's license. They took camping gear with them—gear that Arthur mocked to no end.

“You've gotten soft, Merlin. What happened to the good old Earth?”

"Man evolved to the air mattress and I, for one, am not going to deny that evolution.”

But once Arthur tried out the air mattress, his teasing all but stopped. They built a fire and sat side-by-side, staring out into the water that had been Arthur's resting place for nearly 1500 years. Arthur leaned against a fallen log with his legs splayed and Merlin crawled over to sit between them, plastering his back to Arthur's chest.

Arthur nosed the juncture where Merlin's shoulder met his neck.

“We're going to do this every year, aren't we?” he murmured against Merlin's skin.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To remember our story.”

“Merlin?”

“Yeah?”

“Even after fourteen hundred years, you're still a girl's petticoat.”

 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> This whole fic was basically inspired by [this tumblr post](http://mamalaz.tumblr.com/post/70402189007/au-every-year-since-arthurs-return-merlin).
> 
> And the title of this is a Mark Twain ripoff.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for "A Medieval King Arthur in Cameron's Court" by tuesdaymidnight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2243121) by [mella68](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mella68/pseuds/mella68)




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